Last Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s transit-police chief insisted that “crime is down significantly” on the subways. Two days later, a homeless man was stabbed to death in a Queens station, the third victim this year. Now, a group of labor leaders representing retail, transit and municipal workers say their members don’t feel safe on the rails. The facts show they are right.
The latest murder was like the first two, in February: Someone stabbed a homeless person (thus far unidentified), this time in an Elmhurst M and R station. Two months ago, two homeless people were stabbed to death along the A line, allegedly by an individual with a history of violence.
This year’s three subway murders bring the total tally since March 2020 to 10. Before the pandemic, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority saw one or two murders a year. From 2014 to 2019, it took six years to get to 10 murders. In 13 months, we’ve racked up more than a half-decade’s worth of homicides.
Other crimes remain high, too, proportionate to ridership. NYPD Transit Chief Kathleen O’Reilly said at last week’s meeting that “crime in our subways is down 53 percent,” from January to March. Sure — but ridership, even on a good day, is down 63 percent from pre-COVID levels. Each rider is at greater risk.
Some crimes (besides murders) are up, even without adjusting for ridership. Between January and March, felony assaults were up 8.2 percent.
The only reason crime is down overall is that larcenies (nonviolent thefts) have fallen 70 percent. But larcenies are the result of people being careless: tourists leaving a phone on a seat. There’s less of that, because careless, casual people aren’t going underground.
People who do take the subway feel afraid: Only 26 percent of riders feel safe from crime and harassment on trains, down from 65 percent in the final quarter of 2019, pre-pandemic. In stations, only 34 percent of riders feel safe, down from 70 percent.
Where do people feel the most at risk? Only 16 percent of riders think the Elmhurst station where last week’s murders took place is safe. The customers are right.
You don’t have to be a crime victim to fear crime. It’s scary to be the only person waiting on a train platform, or the only person riding in a car. Yet O’Reilly calls mention of these topics “fearmongering.”
Don’t blame her: She works (indirectly) for de Blasio, who has made it clear that he doesn’t want to hear about subway crime. “People . . . know that the subways are safe,” the mayor said in early April. Polls tell a different story.
And it’s hard to police the subways, when the city’s insurgent political class doesn’t want policing. We know that people who jump the turnstile are disproportionately responsible for committing violent crimes once they’ve entered the system. Less than a month ago, Ronald Bailey, a MetroCard “swipe seller” — someone who jams up machines and demands money from people to enter — allegedly beat a homeless man at Penn Station.
But what police officer wants to interact with a fare-beater in this political climate?
Nevertheless, O’Reilly’s police — including 644 extra officers since the February double murder — continue to do their jobs. From January through March, civil tickets for fare-beating were up by 8.2 percent, compared to the previous year, indicating a semblance of normal enforcement, after a near-cessation last year.
Still, arrests are way down, by 40 percent. And when the police do make an arrest, prosecutors can delay or avoid justice, undoing all that work.
According to an internal NYPD analysis, of 580 felony arrests made in transit since March 2020, 54 percent of the suspect already had open arrests. The majority of fresh transit felons, then, already had active criminal cases.
Yet many cases are closed. One MTA conductor who suffered an attack in Queens was glad to see her assaulter arrested — until she received a form letter from the DA’s office informing her that “the case in which you were a victim . . . was recently dismissed due to reasons attributable to the pandemic,” as the “pandemic has had a significant impact on . . . the functioning of the criminal-justice system.”
As subways chief Sarah Feinberg said last week, “The answer to this issue cannot be ‘just stop talking about it.’ We can’t just pretend that what our customers care about doesn’t matter.”
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor of City Journal.