Man Gets Stabbed on Subway. Guess How Helpful the Cops Were.

Answer: Not very.

Joe Lozito, a Philadelphia resident and stabbing victim, shared
his unforgettable story with
Cracked.com. Lozito encountered Maksim Gelman—a deranged spree
killer—on a New York City subway train on February 12, 2011. Gelman
stabbed Lozito in the face with a knife; though grievously wounded,
Lozito was able to subdue Gelman. Then the police appeared and made
the arrest.

But Lozito explained to Cracked.com that the cops were present
all along, hiding behind a door during the fight to the death,
because they were too afraid to confront the stabber until he had
been defeated:

That creepy guy — who I’d later learn was Gelman — started
banging on the door of the engineer’s compartment. I was sitting
right by the door. The only thing separating the engineer and
myself was a wall. “Let me in,” the crazy person said, crazily.

It turned out there were two cops on the other side of the door,
lying in wait in case Gelman hopped on this train. I found out
later they’d recognized him, but they didn’t charge out
to stop him. Instead they asked, “Who are you?”

Gelman backed away from the door and started pacing the car. The
cops stayed put, because, as the rest of this story will make
clear, they weren’t very good cops.

After the brawl:

The next thing I remember is a cop tapping me on the
shoulder.

“You can get up now. We got him.”

I felt like “we” was being a little charitable. Ever have one of
those “team projects” that you end up carrying all by yourself
while your partners play iPhone games? It was sort of like that,
only if the project was repeatedly stabbing you in the face and
head. The cops didn’t come out of their compartment at
all until Gelman was on the ground and de-knifed.

Neither Lozito nor the passenger who administered emergency
medical assistance to him received much credit; instead, the police
were hailed as heroes. But that account didn’t sit right with a
member of the grand jury who heard the case. This man later tracked
down Lozito and explained just how cowardly the cops had acted:

I asked him to prove he was on the grand jury, and he described
pictures of my injuries that were released only during the hearing.
That was enough for me. He went on to explain: “When you left, they
interviewed the male officer. He testified that he’d watched the
whole thing, and he was about to come out. ‘I started to come out,
I opened the door, but I thought Gelman had a gun, so I closed the
door and stayed inside.'”

Lozito eventually decided to sue the NYPD for failing to
protect him. He lost that suit because the cops have “no
constitutional duty” to protect people:

Turns out it is much easier knife-fighting a maniac on a train
than it is law-fighting the police in court. Thanks to the 2005
Supreme Court ruling that the police have no
constitutional duty to protect people from harm, Lozito’s
case was dropped again. We just want to stress this: they won on
the grounds that the NYPD are under no obligation to protect a
man being stabbed to death right in front of them. But the judge
who dismissed Lozito’s case was sympathetic. She said his version
of the events “ring true” and appear “highly credible.”

Citizens, be warned: If you ever find yourself confronting a
knife-wielding maniac in New York City, you’re on your own.

Read the full thing
here.