Mayor Vows 'Modifications' As Subway Safety Plan Draws Criticism

NEW YORK, NY — Mayor Eric Adams said Monday that "modifications" are on their way for his plan to help homeless New Yorkers on the city's subway system, which reportedly hit several snags in its first week.

"I went out yesterday in some of the subway stations and talked to the officers on the ground ... they gave me some great information," the mayor said at an unrelated press conference Monday. "I'm going to sit down with the team and we're going to make some modifications on how we execute the plan."

The mayor did not say what the "modifications" would specifically address in the "Subway Safety Plan," which was rolled out Feb. 21 after a press conference with Gov. Kathy Hochul.

But it comes as homeless advocates condemn the plan for not adequately addressing where homeless individuals will go once they are sent out of the subway.

An analysis by THE CITY on Sunday found that police officers had been given little guidance on how to handle interactions with homeless New Yorkers other than to "get them out," according to an officer who ejected a woman for throwing a bag on the tracks at Penn Station.

Spot checks by the outlet found that transit cops did not interact with homeless individuals, including at the end-of-the-line checkpoints the mayor outlined in his plan.

“It’s a very magical kind of thinking that we’re going to get people out of the subway when you don’t have any place to put them,” said Beth Haroules, senior staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union. “You can remove that person but what are you doing for the person? You make the neighborhood feel better or you make people on the subway feel better, but you’re not solving the problem.”

City officials have so far refused to reveal how many people talked to by support teams actually accepted placement in shelters or were sent to the hospital for psychiatric observation, according to the outlet.

Adams said Monday that the teams are averaging 125 "interactions" each night, but also did not specify whether those interactions were successful at connecting homeless individuals to services — a main promise in his safety plan.

The struggling safety plan comes after transit crime grew 65 percent in Adams' first month in office.

In the last week, a man was shot on a Brooklyn L train, a woman who was brutally beaten with a hammer during a robbery at Queens Plaza station, a 20-year-old woman who was punched and stabbed while standing on a platform in East New York and a woman was attacked with feces in the Bronx.

"There’s an intersectionality between some of the violence we’re seeing and people who have undiagnosed or untreated mental health issues," Adams said when asked about the Bronx incident on Monday. "That is our primary focus."

Read the full CITY story here.