Another Victim Slashed on New York Subway Train

Yet another New Yorker has become the victim of a vicious slashing on a subway train, bringing the number to nearly 900 slashings, many of them entirely random, according to police.

The latest victim was attacked at the station at 59th Street Columbus Circle and was likely precipitated by an argument between the victim and the perpetrator.

New York Police took two people into custody and charges are pending.

This year has been a terrible year for slashing attacks, many of them unprovoked.

Only a week ago, a wheelchair-bound woman was slashed in the face, seemingly without cause.

In April, a man visiting from Israel was slashed in the face in the Bleeker Street station during what police think may have been a robbery attempt.

These are no outlier attacks. Slashings, usually of the victims’ face or neck, have been occurring at an increased rate even over the already-high rate from 2015. As the Daily Mail reported, New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said slashings are up 20 percent over last year’s terrible toll.

The attacks by the end of March numbered 899 over last year’s total of 746 during that same period.

“Make no mistake about it, stabbings and slashings aren’t going away,” Bratton said earlier this year. “It’s one of the few crimes that are going up [to a] level that is of concern to us.”

But even this wild rise in attacks hasn’t kept the NYPD from playing odd semantic games with how the attacks are being reported in official paperwork.

Early this month, it was reported that NYPD headquarters had issued a strange directive, parsing words police on the streets are supposed to use to write their reports on such attacks.

NYPD bosses issued a directive warning cops on the street to stop using the word “cut” in their reports.

Critics charged that the change in verbiage was only meant to fudge crime statistics in order to bring down the frightening numbers so that reporters would have a harder time highlighting the attacks.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston, or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.