Can New York City Save Its Subways? Uncontrolled crime had pushed ridership way down. Then came the Tuesday mass shooting in Brooklyn. By Hannah E. Meyers
The subway system—lifeblood of this city’s economy and vitality—is in a precarious condition. Weekday ridership has hovered below 60% of pre-pandemic levels. Violent crime has risen in raw numbers even with the dramatic drop-off of riders. The perception and reality of danger loom large. A survey last month of the city’s workforce found that nearly 3 in 4 feel less safe on trains than they did two years ago. Transit officials say riders who never returned to the subways are even more terrified of crime underground.
Into this fray enters Frank R. James, the man suspected of releasing a thick gaseous substance into a train car in Brooklyn on Tuesday before opening fire, wounding 10 passengers. The rush-hour attack at a Brooklyn station deals an enormous blow to the city’s effort to win back riders. How can the New York City Police Department and the Metropolitan Transit Authority make the subways safe again?
The system is newly under the helm of three longtime transit-safety practitioners: Mayor Eric Adams, a former transit cop; MTA Chairman Janno Lieber, a transportation adviser to Mayor Ed Koch in the 1980s; and NYPD Transit Bureau Chief Jason Wilcox, a 35-year police veteran. Their challenges are considerable. The number of 911 reports of knives in the transit system was 139% above the spring 2019 level, and drug-sale reports in the subway were up 71%, the NYPD reported in March. By the first week in March there had been 428 reported transit crimes, about equal to March 2019 numbers, when ridership was twice as high.
New Yorkers’ appetite for enforcement will play an outsize role in this turnaround. The public’s desire for policing swings like a pendulum based on the perceived threat. After 9/11, the NYPD built an intelligence apparatus, counterterrorism officers patrolled stations, and cops performed random bag searches. Many New Yorkers were comfortable with more-invasive tactics such as wiretapping and the use of undercover agents. But as fear waned, the pendulum swung toward concerns about civil liberties and privacy.
On a larger scale, the massive pushback against policing and prosecution over the past two years has been enabled by decades of ever-falling crime. As research shows, the most impassioned proponents of defunding departments have been people too young to remember the violent crime of the 1970s and ’80s.
Over the past few months, comfort with police activity underground has appeared to increase as New Yorkers have grown fed up with disorder. Viral videos of fare-evasion arrests like those that sparked large-scale protests in 2019 have created at most a ripple in recent weeks.
Mr. Adams has stated his determination to flood the subways with cops, and Mr. Wilcox has instructed them to make their presence felt. This boosted proactive policing may be returning dividends. The relative crime rate underground had declined considerably over the past month, with officers intervening more when people smoke, loiter or behave erratically on trains and platforms. But Tuesday’s attack will intensify riders’ fear of returning.
Restored trust in the subway system will depend on New Yorkers signaling their appetite for law enforcement to use its tools, and on their will to help them succeed.
Ms. Meyers is director of policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute.
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