Safer underground: Adams and Hochul try a new subway crime plan
Sitting down to write an editorial about the new gubernatorial-mayoral initiative on subway crime and homelessness, we read the top letter in today’s Voice of the People by George Nader of Brooklyn. We direct your attention to it.
George, age 79, taking his wife to a Broadway show, rode the subway for the first time at night since COVID and experienced chaos and disorder on the trip. Madam governor, Mr. Mayor and their subordinates at the MTA and NYPD: This must be fixed.
We want people to see Broadway shows. We want them to ride the subway day and night. We don’t want them to be harassed or made to feel unsafe, or God forbid, robbed or hurt.
COVID has slashed ridership to half of what it used to be, yet transit crime is up 41% overall since last year. There have been nine subway homicides in 2022 and there were eight last year; pre-COVID, there were an average of two a year.
Our ex-transit cop mayor, Eric Adams, is trying, as he rattled off the numbers under his watch: Three-quarter of a million subway safety inspections, 75,000 summonses, 19,000 people ejected for violating the rules, more than 5,500 arrests and 1,500 emotionally disturbed persons removed.
Gov. Hochul, pledging to do more just weeks before an electorate worried about crime goes to the polls to decide whether to give her a full term, says that some MTA cops now at Grand Central and Penn Station will take over patrolling the mezzanines and platforms of the attached subway stations. Likewise at Jamaica and Atlantic Terminal. That will free up 1,200 overtime shifts daily for NYPD transit cops. The MTA will also use new unarmed guards to curb fare beaters.
Good. When fare beaters are stopped, sometimes outstanding arrest warrants and illegal guns turn up. As for the mentally ill, the subway is no place for a person who needs psychological or psychiatric medical care.
Do more now. Turn this tide. A healthy city needs a safe subway system.
