The NYPD says crime on trains and in stations is down, and city officials say the perception of crime is the main challenge
Police patrolling New York City’s subway system, where four homeless people were stabbed in separate incidents over the weekend.
PHOTO: BEBETO MATTHEWS/ASSOCIATED PRESSThe fatal stabbings of two homeless people in the New York City subway system over the weekend has sparked a debate between state and city officials over how to keep riders feeling safe.
Officials at the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority seized on the killings to call for the New York Police Department to deploy an additional 1,000 police officers in the nation’s largest public-transit system.
Sarah Feinberg, the MTA’s interim head of the subway and bus systems, said this week that she and her colleagues have made 30 requests in the past 18 months for more police officers and mental-health professionals to patrol transit. The authority says it would like to see 4,000 NYPD officers in the system.
City officials said Tuesday they would add 644 NYPD officers for a total of about 3,000 officers patrolling the sprawling system. They said such levels are sufficient and that the main challenge isn’t crime but the perception of crime.
NYPD officials say major crimes on the subway fell 31% last year compared with the previous year. “I think our subway system is the safest large transportation system in the world,” NYPD Chief of Transit Kathleen O’Reilly said at a news conference Tuesday.
NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea also said Tuesday that the NYPD is making progress in reducing crime on subways but police alone can’t ensure public safety. “I think that police officers are asked to do too much at times, quite frankly,” Mr. Shea said in a radio interview.
The city is taking steps to reopen its economy and needs to lure back New Yorkers who stopped using the subway during the Covid-19 pandemic.
About 1.7 million riders take the subway on an average weekday at the moment, down from 5.5 million before the pandemic. “The city cannot come back unless the subway system comes back,” Ms. Feinberg said in an interview.
A spate of high-profile crimes during the pandemic in which people were attacked or killed on the subway has made some riders wary of returning.
The stabbings over the weekend were the latest example. Rigoberto Lopez, 21 years old, was arrested Sunday and charged with murder and attempted murder after attacking four homeless people in separate incidents in the subway system, killing two, police officials said. Mr. Lopez was also homeless and experiencing psychiatric issues, according to the officials. A lawyer for Mr. Lopez didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Recent incidents have involved mentally ill people attacking strangers. On a Saturday afternoon last month, a naked man ran into the Central Park North-110th Street station in Manhattan and pushed a rider off a platform. The man, Malik Jackson, assaulted a passerby who came to the injured rider’s aid on the tracks. Mr. Jackson died following a scuffle that resulted in him falling and touching the electrified third rail.
Ms. Feinberg said she has previously asked the city to designate the subway as a location that can be responded to by homeless or mental-health specialists if someone calls 311 to report a person needing help. Currently, such calls are redirected to 911. A mayoral spokesman said the issue requires a technical fix to the 311 system and that the upgrade is being made.
City and transit officials say that while recent stabbings are alarming, overall subway crime declined last year. The drop was driven in large part by a reduction in theft, which fell 51% in 2020 at a time when ridership hovered at about 30% of pre-pandemic levels for much of the year.
Some violent crimes ticked up. Homicides increased to six in 2020 from three a year earlier, according to the MTA. Rapes rose to seven last year from three in 2019, MTA data showed. So far this year the two people killed this weekend were the only homicides in the subway system, according to police officials. Last year there were no homicides in the same period.
Despite the ridership reduction, felony assaults in the subway declined last year by just 5.3% to 359 from 379, according to the MTA. Last month, police recorded 43 felony assaults in the system, up from 34 such assaults in January 2020.
Transit and NYPD officials say policing can be difficult in a system that includes almost 8,000 train trips a day and 472 stations.
The MTA, which is controlled by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has its own police officers who also patrol the authority’s two commuter-rail systems. In 2019, the MTA decided to increase its force to about 1,300 officers from 800 officers largely to bolster NYPD policing in the subway.
Authority officials paused the hiring last summer because of a budget crisis caused by the pandemic. They say they resumed the expansion this month to replenish ranks lost through attrition. “I also think it’s important for us to have skin in the game on policing our own system,” Ms. Feinberg said.
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