"Catch and Release" it's being called. It's one of a suite of reforms that started in NYC and is now spreading to the rest of the state.
For all the criticism of the succession of mayors from Koch, to Dinkins, to Giuliani, to Bloomberg, there's no doubt that they made the trains run on time. Mayor de Blasio seems intent on enacting policies to return New York City to the years before Koch, when movies like
Escape From New York and the cabbie vignette in
Heavy Metal seemed like reasonable extrapolations from the
then-current state of the metropolis.
.