Subway crime skyrocketed in the first two months of 2024, rising by nearly 20% compared to this time last year — and driven by big increases in grand larcenies, felony assaults and robberies, according to newly-released NYPD statistics.
Mayor Eric Adams said the NYPD would quickly move to 12-hour tours to try to halt the burgeoning crime wave, which he blamed on the city’s rollback of its so-called subway safety plan that flooded the underground with cops in 2022.
“We saw amazing results,” Adams said during Tuesday comments at City Hall. “Increasing the number of police officers in a subway was very visible, that whole ‘omnipresent’ concept and theme. We had to scale back after the money ran out.”
Christopher Sadowski
He added: “We still want [more] visibility, moving officers walking through the trains, being at the platforms [and] being able to talk to people and identify where the crime is actually taking place.”
Five of the six crime categories — murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary and grand larceny — that were outlined in the Feb. 18 CompStat report increased year-to-date.
Only rapes fell, going from one last year to none this year, the statistics show.
Grand larcenies leapt by 22%, rising to 155 this year compared to 127 during the same six-week period in 2023.
Felony assaults rose to 82 from 70 last year — a 17% increase — and robberies jumped 12% to 75, up from 67 last year.
There have been two murders on the subway system in 2024, compared with just one at this point last year.
The number of shooting victims also rose to seven from just one in 2023 — after multiple people were injured in a shootout at a Bronx subway station earlier this month, the statistics showed.
The combined statistics point to an overall crime increase of about 18.3%, with 317 reported incidents compared to 268 over the same period last year.
But arrests have also risen, the report said.
Cops have made 2,585 collars so far in 2024 in the subways, compared with 1,792 last year — a 44% increase.
That includes 504 felony arrests over the last seven weeks, up from 452 in 2023.
The mayor said that his administration would speak with the transit authority and the governor’s office to “see if we can get a complement of support to have an additional amount of overtime for those officers.”
Station Agent Noreen Mallory put a human face on the lawlessness Tuesday when she spoke at a Transit Workers Union hall about a brutal, caught-on-camera assault she endured Friday after waking up a sleeping customer on the Wall Street Station platform.
The man flew into a rage as soon as he opened his eyes — “He was up under a blanket and flung it open, and he was mumbling and waving his finger immediately,” she said.
Mallory was going to tell authorities about the man, whom she had never seen before and could not understand. But the man followed her and eventually punched her in the face, breaking her eye socket.
“I don’t know why,” Mallory said, showing her black eye and broken blood vessels. “I was doing my job. I was simply just doing my job.”
Some men intervened to stop the assault — for which Mallory said she was incredibly grateful.
But the incident underscored how unsafe the agents feel.
“Stations agents are chronically and verbally abused,” she said. “The issue with safety has to be made a priority, the ultimate priority.”
“Ask yourself: If I were a customer who had approached that same bench and aroused this person, and he got up with that same kind of anger and did something to somebody who paid their $2.90, what would be the reaction then?” she asked.
“We are the same,” Mallory continued. “We work there. We work to help all the millions of New Yorkers, and we are there to help all the tourists who arrive in New York City.”
“We’re just doing our jobs,” she said. “And I was subjected to his rage.”
