Soldiers from New York’s National Guard are coming to a subway station near you, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday.
Hochul, a Democrat, said 750 of the National Guard members — as well as state and MTA police officers — will be sent to busy stations to check riders’ bags as part of a new crackdown on transit crime.
During a news conference, the governor said the deployment aims to put passengers at ease after a string of high-profile violent crimes in the city’s transit system.
She said that if a rider is stopped, they’ll have to consent to a bag check in order to enter the station. While they can refuse, they’ll be barred from entering if they do so.
“They can refuse,” she said. “We can refuse them. They can walk.”
The soldiers will be deployed from a National Guard unit called the Joint Task Force Empire Shield. Hochul’s office confirmed they will be dressed in camouflage while they check bags.
Hochul and her office teased the new plan earlier this week and promised to deploy additional state personnel to the subways to supplement Mayor Eric Adams’ plans to station an additional 1,000 NYPD officers there.
She offered more detail on Wednesday and put forward a multipart plan centered around the increased bag checks.
The governor’s plan calls for the passage of a new bill that would allow judges to prohibit someone from riding public transit for three years if they’ve been convicted of assaulting a passenger. But that would require approval from the Democrat-led state Legislature, which has not yet weighed in.
Hochul denied any suggestion that the increased bag checks resembled the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk policies, calling it an “absolutely different dynamic.”
“For people who are thinking about a gun or knife on the subway, at least this creates a deterrent effect,” she said. “They might be thinking, ‘You know what? It just may not be worth it, because I listened to the mayor and I listened to the governor and they…
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