Brooklyn subway shooting suspect posted videos espousing hatred towards African Americans
Apr 14, 2022
New York [US], April 15 : The 62-year-old man Frank Robert James who was apprehended for the New York subway shooting had repeatedly espoused hatred toward African Americans and criticized the New York mayor in videos posted on YouTube, including one uploaded as recently as Monday.
The suspect, James, had opened smoke grenades on the train and fired his gun 33 times, wounding at least 23 people on Tuesday morning and later was arrested on Wednesday by patrol officers in New York City's East Village.
In a video posted last week, James, who is Black, rants about abuse in churches and racism in the workplace, using misogynistic and racist language, reported CNN News.
After talking about community violence, James says, "We need to see more mass shootings. Yeah. ... We need to see more, there have to be more mass shootings to make a n***er understand. ... It's not about the shooter; it's about the environment in which he is, he has to exist."
In one video posted online in February, James criticized a plan by New York City Mayor Eric Adams' administration to address safety and homelessness in the subway in part through an expanded presence of mental health professionals.
In that racist and rambling recording, James said the new effort was "doomed to fail" and described his own negative experience with city health workers during a "crisis of mental health back in the '90s '80s and '70s," reported the news channel.
Preliminary information indicated James mentioned homelessness, New York City and its mayor in online posts, NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said on Tuesday. Sewell said the city would increase the mayor's security.
In another video, James said that he had post-traumatic stress. In that video, James said he left his home in Milwaukee on March 20. During the trip eastward, he said he was heading to the "danger zone."
"You know, it's triggering a lot of negative thoughts of course," he said in the video adding, "I do have a severe case of post-traumatic stress."
James speech made in his YouTube videos had a common theme throughout, in which he repeatedly espoused hatred toward African Americans.
Notably, New York police arrested James accused of shooting on a subway train in Brooklyn that left 10 people injured, New York Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said.
According to the US Attorney for Eastern District of New York Breon Peace, suspect Frank Robert James has a very rich history of arrests in previous years in several states.
"His arrest history in New York is nine prior arrests dating from 1990 to 1998, those include possession of burglary tools four times, criminal sex act, theft of service two times," Peace said during a press briefing.
James is well known to law enforcement and has ties in the states of Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, he added. The suspect also has three arrests in the state of New Jersey in 1991, 1992 and 2007, Peace said.
