Okay, so if one witness says the chokehold was applied 30 seconds before arrival at the next station, then there were 90 seconds for the threat to rise to the level where physical confrontation was needed.
Do subways have any way of contacting the conductor? Are there personnel at NYC subway platforms? The door could have been held open - I think. I've only been in the NYC subway 3X.
I appreciate your posts, Elevatorific, and do not mean to imply that you would personally know the answers (but you might!)
The source of the 30 seconds of neck compression before arriving at the next platform is the journalist who was on the car, already linked throughout these threads. I'm just trying to make sense of the timeline. There are definitely a bit over 3 minutes of continued compression after this journalist exits (he says) the car, and then re-enters (there are then 5 other people still watching Penny, plus Neely and Penny; two of these witnesses exit soon after the videographer comes back in the car). Not counting Penny, the living witnesses who were there until near the end were 5 in number. 3 stay until the end. One of them is concerned that Penny is killing Neely and tries to discourage him, IMO.
The photojournalist expresses regret about not doing more. These are actual witnesses, not SM commentators (some of whom are bots, obviously). IMO.
There are no personnel on trains, with the exception of the conductor and driver.
You can get the attention of the conductor through the side window of their car when you are outside it: and you have the option of an emergency brake to pull in each car, although purportedly this stops the subway wherever it stands, including underground between tunnels, so people are loath to deploy this whenever they don’t have to. I’ve never actually seen it deployed.
theoretically, you could also get in to the engineer if you are in the first car, or in to the conductor if you are in their middle car from pounding on their internal door, but I have no idea what, if anything, it would take to get them to actually open a door; it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the Taking of Pelham 123.
basically, once you’re on the train, you’re stuck.
if you randomly pull the emergency brake, you’re stuck wherever and whenever you are with whatever dire situation you’re stuck with: plus the fact that your fellow commuters won’t be able to actually get anywhere until the issue is resolved, so if you pull it without just cause you’ll be pretty unpopular.
I do think since the new governor started bragging about installing cameras, etc., there has been a larger police presence, but I would primarily say I’ve noticed that in terms of being able to get NYPD attention fairly quickly when you roll/are into a station.
ETA: as for 'people in the stations', you might have/find a live clerk in the token booth; you might not. it really depends upon the station.
If you need to reach someone, there should be some type of emergency call box on the train platform, once the doors open at a train station.
Again, never having needed to deploy this nuclear option myself, I don’t know about their response time.