Felony assaults in the city’s subway system jumped by nearly 22% last month compared to September 2022 – a spike fueled in part by attacks on transit workers, police and the MTA said Monday.
Forty-five felony assaults were reported in the subway system in September – a 21.6% increase from the 37 such crimes recorded during the same month in 2022, the latest statistics released by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority show.
Overall from January to September, the Big Apple saw a 3% spike in felony assaults on the rails — with 422 such crimes reported compared to 411 during that period last year, according to the data.
Attacks on MTA employees were a “notable driver” – accounting for 41 of the total incidents recorded between January and September, the NYPD said. Last year, 34 assaults on MTA employees were reported, according to the department.
Train conductor Felix Ferdinand blamed the revolving door criminal justice system for allowing attacks on transit workers to continue.
“A lot of people are getting let out due to our criminal justice system,” Ferdinand told The Post on Monday.
“Regardless what they do to us, even if it’s an assault … everything becomes harassment. So everybody just gets a slap on the wrist regardless of what they are doing.”
Signs warning that assaults on city workers are punishable by up to seven years in jail are just a “scare tactic” with no real-life application, added Ferdinand – who became a hero over the summer when he applied a tourniquet to a gunshot victim at a Queens subway station.
That June 25 incident at the Rockaway Park – Beach 116th Street station was one of three shootings reported on the rails this year – a 62.5% decline from the eight tallied during the same period in 2022, NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper told reporters Monday.
Gun arrests have significantly surged in the subway system – with a total of 37 busts so far in 2023 compared to 24 during the same period in 2022, The Post reported last week.
That marked an astounding 94% leap compared to 2019, when 19 gun arrests were made.
Meanwhile, overall arrests in transit continued to shoot up from 6,452 to 10,154 year-to-date – about a 57% leap, the data shows.
Fare evasion arrests, specifically, soared about 143% so far this year compared to last – from 1,455 to 3,540.
The NYPD said it is also working to combat the spike in subway assaults with “increased officer deployment” – resulting in 359 such busts between January and September, compared to 294 from the same period in 2022.
In one of September’s terrifying assaults underground, an unhinged 43-year-old man, Norton Blake, allegedly struck a 60-year-old woman dozens of times with her own cane during a heinous, caught-on-video attack Sept. 1 inside the West 116th Street and Lenox Avenue station, cops said.
Derrick Mills, 49, was also nabbed for senselessly shoving a 74-year-old man onto the subway tracks at the 68th Street-Hunter College station on Sept. 12, leaving the victim with a fractured spine, cops said.
Another alleged assailant — identified by cops as Joel Ramirez, 26 — sexually assaulted a 24-year-old woman at the 14th Street-Union Square subway hub, bashing her head on the platform and then snatching her phone as she tried to call 911 early on Sept. 24.
“I really feel for the people of New York and what we’re going through on the subways because I really don’t see any changes — things are actually getting worse,” said Elizabeth Gomes, who was randomly attacked at a Queens station last September – and is still petrified to “step foot back on the subway.”
The mom of five told The Post on Monday that “nothing really has been done” since Waheed Foster, who was ranting about the devil at the Howard Beach A train station, allegedly chased her and threw her into the side of a token booth.
“The city never even reached out to me to see how I was doing. They just let it go. There’s still no police officers there. There’s no kind of security there,” she said Monday.
Even Foster – who was charged with attempted murder in the savage beating – urged the city to do more to combat subway crime, telling The Post in a recent jailhouse interview from Rikers Island that “All they got to do is hire more officers to work down there . . . Somebody can lose their mind at any time.”
“It is getting out of control,” he said.
So far this year, the NYPD and other agencies – including the departments of Homeless Services, Health and Mental Hygiene and Bowery Residents Committee – have made 71,000 “contacts” with homeless individuals or those suffering from mental illness in the transit system, Kemper said. That number may include people who were contacted more than once, police said.
At least 19,000 people “accepted shelter” – temporary or permanent – at the time of offer, Kemper said.
A total 750 people were pulled from the subway system and hospitalized for various reasons – ranging from injury to mental illness – so far this year, he added. Those hospitalized specifically for mental illness amounted for just a fraction, 90, of the total, he added.
“The city is full of mentally ill people who need help,” a Brooklyn cop said. “People can cross the street to get away from attackers. People in the subway are stuck.”
Still, overall felony crime – including murders, rapes, robberies and grand larcenies – in the city’s subway system was down by 5% in September, and 12.5% year-to-date compared to the same time frame in 2022, the latest data shows.
“Although we are encouraged by these decreases, we still realize we have a lot of work to do,” Kemper said.
