Another chapter unfolded Sunday afternoon in the long saga that is the underground, not-so-on-the-low service of $1 vans in this city when a woman leaped from one of the vans after cops targeted the driver.
The unidentified woman jumped from a red Ford Econoline — with Jamaican flags tied to the front bumper and a decal on the front windshield that reads “Dem Nah Bad Like Weh” — in, of all places, Jamaica, Queens at 4:40PM Sunday afternoon, according to the New York Daily News.
It was on 165th street and Archer Avenue when Jameson Golding, 22, tried to evade cops. It’s unclear why the woman jumped out a few blocks later but medics tended to her before Golding crashed the van near the Van Wyck Expressway, according to WABC.
Back in July, The New Yorker published a fascinating multi-media profile about the illegal vans called “shadow transit,” with reporter Aaron Reiss riding on many of the routes in the city. In fact, the magazine reported that the biggest hub for the vans is in Jamaica Center and their popularity has turned them into “the unofficial transportation system.”
What often gets lost in the headlines is that these illegal buses or vans often are born out of necessity: providing transport to parts of boroughs where public transportation is either slow or nonexistent. And, as the New Yorker wrote, they often operate in “low-income neighborhoods that contain large immigrant communities.”
That hasn’t stopped the NYPD from seeking to crack down on the vans, which is what appears to have happened on Sunday. This time, the result was an arrest of a 22-year-old man and a woman who is at Jamaica Hospital in critical condition.
(Image: Best Clip Art)
