MTA Launches Campaign Featuring Ads Against Hate Crimes, Encourages Passenger Reporting

NEW YORK (VINnews) — The Metropolitan Travel Authority (MTA), which is responsible for providing public transportation in New York State with an estimated 11 million passengers daily, revealed a new advertising campaign Monday designed to encourage passengers on public transport to report hate crimes and other “bias-motivated” threats or graffiti.

The campaign comes in the wake of a spate of anti-Semitic and xenophobic hate crimes in the NY public transit system, with the latest occurring just hours before the campaign, as New York police arrested a man for allegedly terrorizing a transgender woman on the subway over the weekend.

The announcement of the campaign was set for January 27th, the day when Auschwitz was liberated, now recognized as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“It’s important to cut this behavior off, any kind of hate crime behavior,” MTA Chairman Pat Foye said at a press conference announcing the campaign.

“One of the lessons of the Holocaust is that it is important to take early signs of hate into account, to take them seriously.”

The various ads feature iconic MTA signs — such as the subway’s mosaics or Grand Central Terminal’s Metro-North track indicators — emblazoned with words like “kindness,” “respect” and “solidarity,” followed by guidance for reporting hate crimes or hate-related incidents to NYPD, state police or the MTA.

The new ads will run on 4,000 screens across the city’s subways and buses, and another 550 screens on Metro-North and Long Island Railroad, officials said.

Transit officials hope the campaign will lead more New Yorkers to call violent crimes directly in to 911.

Riders can report lesser incidents such as graffiti or verbal threats to the MTA at 212-878-1000 and [email protected], or to state police at 1-888-392-3644 or by texting “HATE” to 81336, officials said.