Subway Crime in North Brooklyn Is Up 58% This Year

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN, NY — Felony crimes committed on New York City’s subway system are up 25 percent in 2016 compared to the same time period last year, according to CompStat 2.0, a cool new crime-mapping tool premiered this week by NYPD.

And in North Brooklyn, the same tool shows, this trend is even worse: As of Feb. 21, transit crime was up 58 percent from last year.

FYI, the NYPD’s “Brooklyn North” division covers all neighborhoods north of Atlantic Avenue over to Eastern Parkway. Aka, Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, Downtown Brooklyn, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Weeksville, Brownsville, East New York, Bushwick, Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

An interactive map of all 63 felony crimes committed on North Brooklyn’s public-transit system in 2016 show most of them clustered in Downtown Brooklyn, with smaller clusters in Crown Heights, Williamsburg and East New York.

South Brooklyn, oddly, saw a sharp downturn in subway crime during the same period. So it’s really only “brand Brooklyn” we’re talking about here.

(Note from the NYPD: “Crime within the Transit System is recorded at the station the train is moving toward if it occurs on a train in motion, otherwise at the station of occurrence. This will generally translate to intersections on the map.“)

NYPD Transit Chief Joseph Fox said on news radio this week that he deployed extra officers throughout NYC’s subway system in February in response to a 36 percent rise in transit crime in January.

“Our latest deployment plan includes saturating the transit system with uniformed officers, including officers from local precincts,” he said.

Most crimes committed on the NYC subway system this year were filed under “grand larceny” — aka, robbery of expensive things.

But there has also been a frightening rise in stabbings and slashings in 2016 — many of them on the subway.

As of Feb. 21, police had recorded nearly 567 stabbings and slashings across NYC, almost 100 more than in the same time frame last year.

Previously on Patch:

• Brooklyn Subway Slasher Turns Himself Over to Police
• Woman on Brooklyn A Train: ‘I‘m Going To Cut You’
• Man Slashes Brooklyn A Train Rider, Disappears Into Subway System: Reports
• 2 Men Slashed Aboard Brooklyn C Train: Police
• Another Brooklyn Subway Slasher Caught on 3 Train

Although the NYPD could not provide data on how many of those occurred on the subway, CompStat 2.0 is showing felony assaults on the transit system have doubled both citywide and in North Brooklyn so far this year.

Patch has reached out to the commanding officer for the NYPD’s Brooklyn Transit Bureau, Deputy Inspector Vincent Giantasio, for more on what this rise in subway crime means for the North Brooklyn and what’s being done to combat it. We’ll update if/when we hear back.