Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul just proved the obvious: Surge more cops into the subways, and crime will drop — or at least some of it.
On Wednesday, they announced that overall subway crime is down 8% this year, compared to last year, making it 11% lower than in 2019, the year before the pandemic.
Alas, the falloff isn’t nearly as terrific as they make it sound.
Nor does it include a long-term plan for keeping crime on downward path.
What happens when the cops they’ve surged are gone?
Adams notes “five straight months of double-digit decreases,” adding that robberies this year are the lowest “in recorded history.”
“Today, other than during the pandemic, our transit system is the safest it’s been in 14 years,” boasts Hizzoner.
But this comes after the city surged more than 1,000 added officers into the system in February, plus another 800 to crack down on fare-beaters.
And after Hochul also dispatched the National Guard and state police to the subways.
Other initiatives — more security cameras and mental-health professionals — also helped.
But this isn’t Adams & Co.’s first “subway surge”; past gains ebbed when the surge ended.
And though crimes like robberies fell (by 22.5% over last year, and by 12.7% over five years ago), others rose:
- The subways have seen six murders this year, compared to just five last year and two in 2019. Before that, more than one or two for the whole year was rare.
- Felony assaults are down 7% over 2023, but remain up 51% over 2019.
- Shooting victims also more than doubled last year and tripled over the past five years.
In other words, violent crime still seems headed in the wrong direction.
Yes, more cops and the farebeating crackdown helped. And Adams is now promising to install gun-detecting scanners in the system.
But Hizzoner’s data doesn’t show how many arrests — for, say, hopping a turnstyle — were actually prosecuted and whether more (and stiffer) consequences for law-breakers could’ve produced better results, particularly in reducing violent crime.
And it’s unlikely the extra city and state law enforcers can stay forever; they’ll be needed elsewhere soon enough, leaving the subways ripe for another crime spike.
Give the mayor, gov and MTA boss Janno Lieber credit for making some headway.
New Yorkers need to know they’ll be safe in the subway; if too many avoid it, the city will never fully recover.
But Gotham needs a long-range plan (say, enlarging the NYPD and ensuring lawbreakers suffer meaningful consequences), not endless rounds of whack-a-mole.
