Stardate 20010821.0638 (On Screen): Up through the 1970's, the rail transit system in NYC was constantly being vandalized to a degree which defies belief. You've all seen pictures. Ed Koch was mayor then and decided he wanted it to end, and end it he did. The NYC trains now are clean and uniformly painted, and rarely exhibit "custom" paint jobs. Most of the worst unofficial painting was done by kids who would break into railyards at night and work on the cars there. Koch asked his railroad people what could be done about that, and they told him that nothing could. "So build a fence around it."
They'll just climb the fence. "Use guard dogs."
If we have guard dogs, they could attack rail workers. "Well, then, build
two fences and put the dogs in between."
Umm, hmm, well... That ended up being what they did. The railyards are now surrounded by a double-row of fences topped with razor wire, and guard dogs roam the space between them. And after that was done, illicit entry into rail yards dropped to almost nothing.
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