Get Ready to See the National Guard on Your Commute
Governor Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday that her administration will be ramping up the law-enforcement presence in the New York City subway system, deploying 1,000 members from state agencies amid a spate of violent crimes in transit stations.
Hochul told reporters that 750 members of the New York National Guard will be working alongside 250 members of the New York State Police and the MTA Police Department to “conduct bag checks in the city’s busiest transit stations.” That’s in addition to the 1,000 NYPD officers who were deployed in the subway system back in February.
The action is part of a five-point plan presented by the governor to address crime on the subway. Ahead of her announcement, Hochul recounted a series of violent incidents that have occurred throughout the system in recent days. Nearly a week ago, an MTA conductor was slashed in the neck in an early-morning random attack as he stuck his head out of his subway cab as the train entered the Rockaway Avenue station in Brooklyn. On Sunday, a 64-year-old postal worker was kicked onto the subway tracks at Penn Station. Both men were assisted by bystanders and are now recovering.
“These brazen, heinous attacks on our subway system will not be tolerated,” Hochul said.
After the attack on the subway conductor, transit employees reportedly stopped work to file safety complaints, resulting in a delay in the next day’s morning commute on certain lines. The city actually saw a decrease in transit crime in February compared to last year, but arrests in the system are up by 45 percent, per NYPD statistics. Crime in the city overall is down, according to these same figures.
As part of her plan, Hochul also proposed amending state law to allow banning people from riding the subway or the city’s buses for three years if they’ve been convicted of a violent crime against a fellow passenger. The governor said the idea wasn’t “radical,” comparing it to barring drivers convicted of a DWI from operating a vehicle. She added that it would be an extension of a law already on the books that allows transit bans for those convicted of assaulting a transit employee — though how such a law would be enforced isn’t clear.
Hochul promised increased coordination between law-enforcement agencies and city district attorneys, with the MTA police department planning an “early warning system” to notify prosecutors about repeat offenders. Hochul also directed the MTA to install cameras in conductor cabins on subway trains.
Mayor Eric Adams, who wasn’t present at Hochul’s announcement, has also been pushing the issue of subway crime this week, confirming Tuesday that bag checks were going to be reinstituted in key stations. In an interview with PIX 11, Adams said the checks will be random and not based on profiling.