New York City can’t surrender and allow the Big Apple to descend back to the bad old days of subway crime, MTA boss Janno Lieber stressed Wednesday — just days after an innocent straphanger was shoved to his death in the latest violent underground attack.
“This is a nightmare for New Yorkers,” Lieber said during a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board meeting in downtown Manhattan as concerns over transit crime only continue to surge.
“I grew up in New York riding the trains at a time when crime and subway breakdowns were much more frequent. My kids grew up in a different subway era. They were able to come and go at all hours of the night feeling safe,” the transit chief continued.
“We’re not going back. We’re not going back!”
The MTA CEO’s remarks — his first since Monday’s chilling subway attack in Harlem — came after it emerged the unhinged man allegedly responsible has a lengthy rap sheet and a severe history of mental illness.
Carlton McPherson, 24, of the Bronx, was slapped with a murder charge after he allegedly pushed 54-year-old Jason Volz in front of a northbound 4 train at the East 125th Street and Lexington Avenue station in the unprovoked attack on Monday night, cops and sources said.
“We are not surrendering our city to anyone — not to criminals and not even to the people who have severe mental health issues, even though we feel a ton of compassion for them,” Lieber told the transit agency meeting.
“For millions of New Yorkers, there’s no alternative to mass transit, they need to live their lives,” Lieber said. “There is no New York for them without mass transit.”
The deadly shove comes amid a surge of violent crime within the city’s subway system of late, including a high-profile deadly shooting on a crowded train car in Brooklyn earlier this month.
The number of felony assaults in the sprawling underground transit system jumped 53% last year from pre-pandemic times, with 570 such attacks in 2023 compared to 373 in 2019, the latest NYPD data show.
While it wasn’t immediately clear exactly what is behind the alarming spike, a number of recent incidents are tied, in part, to mental illness.
Half of the nearly 40 perps busted for attacking MTA employees in the underground system last year had histories of mental illness, a recent Post investigation revealed.
Of the 38 charged in 41 separate assaults on the transit staffers, 20 had documented psychological problems at least five arrests to their names, documents obtained by The Post showed.
During Wednesday’s transit meeting, the MTA touted the success of its new teams that are responsible for intervening when mentally ill New Yorkers suffer breakdowns at stations in order to get them the help they need.
The two teams have gotten 90 people out of the transit system over the last three months — or roughly one person a day, officials said.
The mental health personnel are tasked with sticking with the removed person until they are admitted to a hospital for stabilization, or taken to shelter with on-site mental health services in a bid to ensure they don’t just end up back on the streets.
Gov. Kathy Hochul last month vowed to give the MTA $20 million to expand the program from two to 10 teams as part of her crime-fighting plan to combat transit crime.
