NYC Subway Crime Dips, But Hochul Deploys National Guard Anyway: Data

NEW YORK CITY — A massive deployment of National Guard troops and cops to conduct random bag checks in New York City’s subways is less about facts and more about feelings.

Even Gov. Kathy Hochul acknowledged as much Wednesday as she unveiled a five-point subway safety plan in response to what she called recent “brazen, heinous” attacks on straphangers and MTA workers.

Those attacks were exceptions to a 15 percent dip in overall subway crime in February, according to NYPD statistics released the day before Hochul’s announcement. But the governor brushed off the data.

"Rattling off statistics, saying things are getting better, doesn't make you feel better," she said. "Especially when you've just heard about someone being slashed in the throat or thrown onto a subway tracks."

The price of New Yorkers feeling better in the subway system will be the return of random bag checks conducted by 750 National Guard troops and 250 state and MTA police, alongside NYPD officers doing the same, Hochul said.

The deployment of nearly 1,000 National Guard and police dovetails with Mayor Eric Adams' announcement Tuesday that NYPD officers will reinstate bag checks.

'You'll start seeing them at the tables, making sure that weapons are not being brought in," Hochul said.

NYPD statistics, however, hint that weapons and other violence — though high-profile — aren’t the transit crimes with a recent rise.

January saw subway crimes surge 45 percent — a rise that Mayor Eric Adams in part attributed to a since-reversed rollback of NYPD officers on the rails. He also told 1010WINS the surge was driven by grand larcenies, specifically carried out by “lush workers” who target drunken or sleeping straphangers.

Indeed, grand larcenies such as pickpocketing dropped nearly 29 percent in February compared to the same month last year.

And the number of transit felony assaults in February both this year and last was identical: 35.

Hochul's plan — which also calls to ban people from the subway system if they commit violence within — received a mix of bafflement and outrage from civil liberties advocates.

Black and Brown New Yorkers will bear the brunt of such a "heavy-handed approach," much like they did during stop-and-frisk, said Donna Lieberman, executive director for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"This plan is whiplash inducing," she said in a statement. "The city only recently trumpeted safety data. Sound policy making will not come from overreacting to incidents that, while horrible and tragic, should not be misrepresented as a crime wave and certainly don’t call for a reversion to failed broken windows policies of the past."

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams accused Hochul of posturing and “militarizing the subway” to look tough on crime.

"It's one thing to have conductors announce increased police presence on the platform," he said. "It's another entirely to further criminalize the public on public transit while neglecting the real improvements these resources could be devoted to, like fixing the subway itself."

Hochul demurred when asked specifics on how the deployment will last. She said New Yorkers who don't submit to bag checks won't be allowed to enter the subway system.

"They can refuse," she said, before adding: "We can refuse them."

"They can walk."