“Transport Workers United Local 100 Interim President John V Chiarello announced today that TWU Local 100 would match the reward offered by NYPD Crime Stoppers for information leading to the apprehension of the six unidentified men who took a R Train on a joyride last weekend. The Union will pay up to $3,500 for the information, matching the Crime Stoppers reward. Images of the six men on platforms and entering the transit system were released today by Crime Stoppers.”
“The NYPD announcement noted that the six individuals ’caused damage to glass panels on the train,’ but this was the least of it, Mr Chiarello said. ‘A bunch of reckless teens took a $20 million piece of equipment out of a secure transit layup area, endangering themselves, transit property, and transit workers who may well have been working on the tracks,'” says a statement from TWU Local 100 chief John Chiarello on the hunt for the mischievous punks who broke into and stole not one but two R trains that had been parked overnight on tracks usually reserved for the N express train along 4th Ave in Brooklyn. Not for nothing but it seems like the $3,500 is the price TWU is willing to pay to avenge being made to look foolish and incompetent enough to allow a $20 million piece of equipment to be stolen by teenagers. Don’t these things have key ignitions in the operator cab?
Per the New York Daily News, the suspects posted video of the joyride on Instagram in which they can be seen passing at least one station and another train in service, with one saying “Check [the] radio now,” to see if they’d been noticed by the other train’s TWU member crew. They weren’t.
“Still photos released by police show at least one suspect jumping a turnstile” as they made their way to the parked trains, the News writes as if they expected the kids to use their MetroCards.