- Fears of crime on subways and buses have become a top concern in some U.S. cities, leading to efforts to persuade public officials to tackle the problem.
- New York Governor Cathy Hochul announced that she would send 750 National Guard troops to help patrol the city’s subways.
- The Pennsylvania Legislature also created a special prosecutor to deal with crimes occurring in the Southeast region’s transportation system.
Fears of crime on subways and buses are once again a top concern in some U.S. cities, as are efforts to persuade public officials to take the issue seriously.
New York Gov. Cathy Hochul announced Wednesday that 750 National Guard troops will help patrol the nation’s busiest subways, responding to New York City police after gunfire on a train platform left a conductor slashed in the neck. He said he felt that reinforcements were needed. .
The Pennsylvania Legislature created a special prosecutor to investigate transportation crimes in the southeastern part of the state. Mayor Sherrell Parker also pledged Thursday to increase police patrols in Philadelphia, where a spate of transit-related shootings left three people dead and 12 injured, many of them high school students.
New York Governor Hochul calls in state police and National Guard to help curb crime in New York City subways
“Enough is enough,” she said on WURD radio.
Several heavily armed New York National Guard soldiers patrol Grand Central Terminal in New York on March 7, 2024. Fears of crime on subways and buses are once again a top concern in some U.S. cities, as are efforts to persuade public officials to tackle the problem. (AP Photo/Mary Altafer)
It remains to be seen whether these moves will have any effect on reducing crime on large public transport systems.
Hochul acknowledged that the National Guard was deployed not only to make public transportation safer, but also to allay fears and make a political statement. The city’s subways are already safe, Democrats reasoned, but a show of force might do more to dispel fears than any statistics.
“If it feels better to walk past someone in uniform on the subway to prevent someone from bringing a knife or a gun, then that’s exactly why I did it,” Hochul said on MSNBC on Thursday. “We want to change the psychology of crime in New York City.”
“Democrats are going to prove they’re fighting crime, too,” she added. “So this rhetoric that Republicans are saying, we’re soft on crime, we’re defunding the police, then? That’s not the case.”
Police say serious crimes on New York City’s transit system will drop by nearly 3% from 2022 to 2023, with five homicides last year, down from 10 the year before. Overall, violent crimes are rare within the subway system, and train cars and stations are generally as safe as any other public place.
While overall crime in Pennsylvania’s regional transit systems has declined in recent years, there were six homicides in 2023, up from a total of seven in the previous three years.
Still, the issue of bus and train safety continues to resonate with voters, especially as some systems recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, which kept passengers away. be.
Alain Ulloa (43), a resident of New York, said, “Recently, the security situation has gotten a little worse.That’s why I think we should put restrictions on it before it gets out of hand.” “They slashed the conductor the other day, and that’s not cool.”
New York’s Republican Party grilled Democrats on crimes in the 2022 midterm elections, and that message helped the party win suburban legislative seats.
But an increased law enforcement presence can be a double-edged sword, said Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.
“For some people, they want more security,” he said. “And for others, I would say we’re overreacting.”
Vincent del Castillo, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former New York City Transit Police chief, said the harsh political debate obscures the reality that traffic crimes make up a small percentage of all crime. He says this could lead to him hiding it.
“When you literally have hundreds of people in the city, you could have 10 to 12 murders in the system,” he says. “But it’s so rare that it gets a lot of attention.”
The four shootings connected to Philadelphia’s bus system began Sunday, when a man was killed by another passenger shortly after getting off the bus.
Two more bus-related shootings occurred over the next two days, leaving two more people dead and four more injured. And on Wednesday, eight teenagers were gunned down as they waited to board a city bus home after school, leaving the bus riddled with bullet holes.
Charles Lawson, the city’s transit police chief, vowed that officers would take an aggressive approach to cracking down on crime, using “every criminal law in the textbook.”
“We’re going to target individuals who are hiding their identities,” he said. “We’re going to target fare evasion. We’re going to target overt drug use.”
New York’s Guard troops probably won’t be as active. Instead, they are tasked with assisting police in conducting random searches of bags, a practice that has been in place for nearly 20 years. Passengers have the right to refuse such searches, but if they do so they will be asked to leave the subway.
Security forces cannot make arrests, but if they witness a crime they can detain someone, like any civilian, until police arrive.
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Troops were deployed on Thursday, but they were not very visible at stations or on trains, so transit users may not have noticed. It has also been seen patrolling major hubs such as Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station, and has been a regular presence since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Passengers have long been divided over baggage screening. Although baggage checks are infrequent, there is a possibility that you may be stopped while boarding the train. Searches have also long been the subject of concerns about racial profiling, which the NYPD says it is taking steps to avoid.
Jerome Brooks Jr., a 44-year-old actor and musician, said, “Sometimes when I’m in a hurry and I’m carrying my bag, I don’t like being stopped.” “So I think if I’m going to stop someone who doesn’t look like me, are they going to stop me?”
Cheryl Ann Harper, 46, said she welcomed the precautions.
“We need that,” she said, noting that similar testing is common in theaters. “I do it all the time. It’s no big deal. Why can’t you open your bag if you have nothing to hide?”
