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It’s Monday.

Weather: Rainy all day and windy, starting chilly and warming through the 50s into the evening.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until Dec. 25 (Christmas Day).

The demonstrators’ chant echoed through Downtown Brooklyn last month: “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D.”

Tensions have been rising in the subway system in recent weeks, with commuters observing and filming what they deem to be the overly aggressive policing of black and Hispanic riders. Some New Yorkers have jumped turnstiles in protest of the arrests of young black men and the handcuffing of a woman selling churros.

In a discrimination lawsuit brought against the Police Department, several officers recently gave sworn statements saying that a commander helping to oversee much of the system in Brooklyn urged officers to target black and Hispanic commuters for low-level offenses.

The department has said its enforcement of fare evasion is not aimed at black and Hispanic people.

[Read more: “I got tired of hunting black and Hispanic people.”]

The details

The commander in question, Constantin Tsachas, was in charge of more than 100 officers between 2011 and 2015. The district he commanded spanned much of south Brooklyn, including the diverse neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Flatbush and Brighton Beach.

According to signed affidavits, which were gathered in the last few months as part of the lawsuit, Mr. Tsachas, who is now a deputy inspector, pressured subordinates to enforce minor violations like fare evasion against black and Hispanic people.

He discouraged them from doing the same with white or Asian people, the affidavits said.

“I got tired of hunting Black and Hispanic people because of arrest quotas,” one former officer, Christopher LaForce, said in his affidavit, explaining his decision to retire in 2015.

Inspector Tsachas and the Police Department declined to comment for the article, but his union representative said the inspector denied allegations of misconduct.

The context

Enforcement on the subway has surged over the past year. Police officers issued 22,000 more tickets for fare evasion this year compared with 2018, The Times reported.

Hundreds more officers have also been deployed in the transit system in recent months, sparking debate about overpolicing and the criminalization of poverty. Black and Hispanic people had already accounted for an outsize number of arrests on the subway.

Governor Cuomo has been sharply criticized for the expanded deployment, as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is facing a looming financial crisis and struggles to provide reliable subway service.

Want more news? Check out our full coverage.

The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.

What we’re reading

Christmas trees in New York have gotten pricey, with one 20-foot Fraser fir selling for a cool $6,500. [New York Post]

The average daily cost of incarceration in New York City has reached a record high, a study found. [Wall Street Journal]

Two men are dead after jumping separately from the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, the Police Department said. [Staten Island Advance]

Coming up today

See a screening of “Mama Africa: Miriam Makeba,” part of the African Diaspora International Film Festival, at Cinema Village in Manhattan. 3:10 p.m. [$13]

Learn about the revival of the landmark restaurant Gage & Tollner with its co-owner and head chef at the Brooklyn Historical Society. 6:30 p.m. [$10]

Watch a performance of “The Courtroom: A Re-enactment of Deportation Proceedings” at Cooper Union in Manhattan. 7 p.m. [Free with R.S.V.P.]

— Melissa Guerrero

Events are subject to change, so double-check before heading out. For more events, see the going-out guides from The Times’s culture pages.

And finally: Emma Lazarus’s sitting room

The Times’s Melissa Guerrero writes:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” reads a plaque that was installed inside the Statue of Liberty in 1903.

Emma Lazarus wrote those lines as part of a sonnet, titled “The New Colossus,” in 1883, in an effort to raise money for the statue’s pedestal. Now, nearly 140 years later, the Center for Jewish History is bringing new attention to Ms. Lazarus and her poem.

An exhibit that opened at the center last week includes an imagined life-size rendering of a sitting room in Ms. Lazarus’s former brownstone on West 10th Street in Manhattan. The design was pieced together from research about the era, as well as her writings and letters. Photos of the Lazarus family are scattered throughout the room.

Annie Polland, the executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society, which produced the display, said visitors would experience what a day in the life of Ms. Lazarus might have been like. The exhibit — which is part of the larger Emma Lazarus Project, a three-year initiative to bring attention to the writer — also aims to educate about the issues of the time.

“America is at its best when it is welcoming, and it grows from a welcoming spirit,” Dr. Polland said. Ms. Lazarus wrote the sonnet “at a time when a lot of people didn’t feel that way.”

The exhibit is free and on view until 2022.

It’s Monday — explore the past.

Metropolitan Diary: At Penn Station

Dear Diary:

I was returning to Long Island from what had been an exhausting four-day conference in Washington. As I dragged my heavy suitcase across Penn Station from Amtrak to the Long Island Railroad, every step challenged my 86-year-old body.

When I reached the board with the train schedule, I saw that my train to Huntington was to leave in five minutes. Rushing to the gate, I noticed that the escalator was out of order. Looking at the steep steps down to the platform left me feeling defeated.

Spotting a young man, I asked if he had a grandmother.

“Yes,” he answered warily.

“Do you like her?” I said.

“I love my grandmother,” he replied.

“Well, I’m an exhausted grandmother. Would you mind carrying my suitcase down to the train?”

He grabbed my bag, brought it down the stairs and waited while I slowly made my way to the platform. He led me onto the train, chose a seat, put the suitcase next to me, smiled as I expressed my gratitude and left.

I sighed with relief, set for the final stretch home.

Two minutes later, the young man came running down the aisle.

“I put you on the wrong train,” he shouted.

Grabbing my suitcase, he pulled me onto the train across the platform. An announcement came over the speaker: A mistake had been made. The train to Huntington was the one I was now on.

I wished I had hugged that young man and had told him to hug his grandmother for me.

— Myra Fischman

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