NYC subway safety plan gets going after a violent weekend

NEW YORK (AP) — New York's latest plan to tackle both crime and homelessness in subways was rolling into action Monday after police logged more than a half-dozen attacks in trains and stations over the holiday weekend.

Mayor Eric Adams' plan, announced Friday, involves sending more police, mental health clinicians and social service outreach workers into the subways. Adams spokesperson Fabien Levy said Monday that a “phased-in” implementation was beginning.

The plan notes that many people who use the subways for shelter need help, not handcuffs, but says police will crack down on sleeping, littering, smoking, doing drugs or hanging out in the system. It calls for clearing all passengers out of trains at the ends of their lines, an approach that has waxed and waned over the years.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subways, “knows that there are people in the subway system who need help and must and will be helped. But they can’t stay in the subway system,” spokesperson Aaron Donovan said Monday.

Adams, a Democrat and onetime transit police officer who took office last month, said Friday that allowing people to live on subways is “cruel and inhumane” to them and unfair to other riders and transit workers.

“The days of turning a blind eye to this growing problem are over,” said Adams, who campaigned on improving public safety.

But Shelly Nortz, a deputy executive director of the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless, cautioned against “criminalizing homelessness and mental illness” and suggested the city was falling back on policing strategies that had failed in the past.

In recent years, the city has veered between responding to concerns about crime in the subways and complaints about heavy-handed policing there. The last mayor, Democrat Bill de...