Top NYPD officials told local lawmakers on Wednesday that New York City’s subway system remains generally safe despite a string of recent high-profile crimes that have raised concerns about public safety on trains and platforms.
But several members of the City Council pushed back on police officials’ accounts, questioning whether stepped-up policing and the presence of National Guard soldiers in the subway are having their intended effect of deterring violent crime and making riders feel safer.
The at-times tense back-and-forth came as lawmakers are reviewing Adams’ latest spending plan for the city, totaling roughly $109 billion, including about $6 billion for the NYPD. The administration and Council must reach a deal on the city’s budget before July, when the next fiscal year starts. The hearing also came less than a week after an altercation between riders on an A train in Downtown Brooklyn escalated into a shooting and underground chaos that made national headlines — the fourth shooting in the city’s transit system this year.
“Black and brown men get swept up in our criminal justice system,” Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who represents parts of northern Brooklyn, said at the Council hearing on Mayor Eric Adams’ preliminary budget proposal for the NYPD for next fiscal year. “It is devastating our communities. We have returned fully to the era of broken windows policing.”
Police Commissioner Edward Caban said on Wednesday that overall crime in the transit system declined by 3% in 2023, including an 8% drop in December. He acknowledged an uptick in subway crime in January, but said the total number of serious transit crimes that occurred that month represented less than 2% of crimes citywide.
Caban also attributed increased perceptions of subway crime to alleged “career criminals” who repeatedly commit violence, such as three people he said were arrested more than 100 times each for various crimes, including assaulting MTA employees.
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