March 31, 2024 - 5:00pm
New York Mayor Eric Adams, who has supported a recent influx of police into the subway system, was taken to task in a viral Friday interview with a progressive attorney who argued that increased police presence makes some passengers feel less safe — a charge Adams disputed.
The attorney accused him of fear-mongering about subway crime and promoting heavy policing that was racially biased and violated New Yorker’s constitutional rights. The conversation perfectly distilled the problem Democratic city leaders are now facing: how they can rein in crime while retaining their progressive bona fides.
The subway system recently became host to 1,000 additional law enforcement officials, most of them members of the National Guard, as concerns mounted over high profile, random violent crimes within the train system.
This move came after a conductor was slashed across the neck while on the job in late February. The past two years have also seen passengers shoved in front of moving trains and fatally shot within the city’s underground train network. Just this past week, a man was killed after being pushed onto the tracks in an apparently random attack; the man police identified as responsible had a history of homelessness, mental health problems and violent crime. He had been placed on supervised release after he was charged in October for assault and menacing and criminal possession of a weapon.
The attacks are part of a larger problem with the city’s approach to crime — one that won’t be resolved by the large-scale hassling of ordinary subway passengers by the US military. A small number of known repeat offenders are responsible for much of the crime, and criminal justice reform efforts that began in 2019 are to blame.
“We find ourselves arresting the same people over and over again,” NYPD transit chief Michael Kemper recently said. “In 2023, NYPD cops made over 13,600 arrests in the subway system. 124 of those individuals were arrested five or more times in the subway system last year alone. These 124 people alone… totalled over 7,500 arrests in their lifetime.”
The city maintains an informal list of the 50 homeless people most in need of treatment and most resistant to help. One man on the list was Jordan Neely, who was killed on the subway last year after allegedly threatening violence; he had been arrested at least three dozen times before, including for several violent offences, but he continued to roam the streets with an active arrest warrant over his head.
It wasn’t always so. Up until early 2020, the subways were very safe, according to Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. The implementation of criminal justice reform policies, including bail reform and the then-DA’s decision to stop prosecuting fare evasion arrests, were the primary driving factors behind the spike in subway crime, she told UnHerd.
“You had a complete pullback in policing during the first few months of Covid. Police basically making no arrests. People got used to an environment of total lawlessness,” she said. “Although the police are now making more arrests, issuing more summons, you still have the issue of very little happens to these people once they’re put into the criminal justice system.”
The data bears out her claims about criminal justice reform and subway crime; reports of felony assault in the subway system rose 53% from 2019 to 2023, and only 22% feel safe riding the subway at night, down 25 percentage points from 2017.
Failure to prosecute lower-level crimes, and the police’ subsequent reluctance to make arrests for those crimes, means the authorities miss opportunities to stop criminals who go on to commit more serious offences while in the subway. “Most people who beat the fare aren’t going to kill someone, but pretty much everyone who kills someone beat the fare,” Gelinas said.
Indeed, police in the Bronx stopped a fare evader Thursday evening only to find that the man, a convicted murderer, was carrying a gun and a felony quantity of crack cocaine while on parole, according to the NYPD chief of transit.
Some of the 2019 criminal justice reform provisions are being rolled back at the state level, expanding the police’ ability to involuntarily detain the mentally ill and walking back bail reform. But New York remains the only state in the country without a danger standard, meaning judges can’t detain someone they believe is a danger to the community.
Adams’ office has touted its efforts to hire more clinicians and connect the mentally ill on the subways with medical services, but this won’t necessarily resolve the city’s reluctance to involuntarily detain those who pose a danger to the public on a long-term basis. The same goes for highly publicised AI scanners meant to keep guns out of the subway: even if it completely eliminates guns from the subway, it can’t stop mentally ill criminals from throwing passengers onto the tracks.
A more robust response to crime might involve a state-level danger standard, along with a push from prosecutors to pursue charges even for the crimes they perceive to be low-level, particularly serial fare evasion. Elected leaders will struggle from both a practical and public relations standpoint to resolve the unchecked crime problem they have allowed to fester under the surface.
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SubscribeElected officials will do nothing since they can just blame white supremacy. And when people leave… blame white supremacy.
And another racist! You guys are just everywhere today!
Your hate spews out of every sentence you write.
That’s just the forum troll. It’s best to ignore him/her/it. Remember: Never feed trolls.
As for New York Sh!tty, as I call it, my husband was there on a business trip last week, and robbed in his hotel lobby. iPhone, credit cards, ID gone. The financial damage reached £60,000 within hours—mostly on credit cards, but also from bank accounts. Even worse, they have our home address, and phone numbers/emails for family members and friends. Husband has told his company that he will never go back, and that they should identify another employee to send there in his stead. The NYPD detective was very helpful, but clearly frustrated as his efforts are thwarted by “progressive” politicians. I will never set foot there for as long as I live.
I usually visit NYC yearly to visit close friends. We got our own place in Brooklyn this year traveling via subway to to our usual meetups experiencing first hand , during daylight hours , what a shit sow it is for those living there. Never a commute without some firm of “ look at me” outrage, always persons of color, tempting response from folks simply trying to get from A to B. Go take a ride and see.
Exactly. DEI is the ideology of non-white fascists. Fascists always blame Jews, DEI/woke always blame whites.
Actually there’s very little in the way of white supremacy in New York City these days. Most white people, self included, who can have left the City long ago. There are isolated pockets like the trendy, pseudo-intellectual Upper West Side, the self-imposed ghettos of the Ultra-Orthodox (even these are crumbling as more and more leave for New Jersey and Westchester), and the declining ethnic Italian and Irish enclaves, where black and hispanic criminals are wise to stay away from. New York is a Third World dump, in every sense of the word.
It’s a total breakdown of the social contract. We all give up certain rights. In return, the state affords us a certain level of protection. The state, in some jurisdictions, is no longer upholding its part of the bargain and indeed prosecuting people who try to protect themselves. This won’t end well.
I presume the people will take the law into their own hands and we’ll have a free for all.
They don’t want it to end. The malevolent State retains its power by keeping citizens demoralized and in danger. Self-protection is next to impossible in New York, just one of the many reasons people are fleeing. I used to live and work in Manhattan. It wasn’t a picnic and I had a few scary encounters, but I took the subway all the time without fear. Now? It’s safer to walk by a Florida pond in the middle of the night.
It has been interesting to watch the rise of armed citizen patrols in black neighborhoods. They have been filling a gap as policing left their communities and it has made a difference.
The specific problem on the NY subway is black criminality. Black criminals are treated with special treatment simply because they are black. This is what DEI is.
The fact this article never mentions the word black once is the problem, however.
The racists who promote DEI need to be ousted from power, but that will never be possible if the adults in the room won’t call them out.
DEI does nothing for marginalized black people. It’s a program to maintain the status of the educated elite, black and white. I doubt it’s a racial issue either. I’m sure the vast majority of these perpetrators have severe mental health issues.
It is a racial issue. Let’s pretend all of these black criminals pushing white and Asian people onto tracks are mentally ill, and not motivated by hate. The fact remains, they are being treated differently because of their race, because of DEI.
The advocates of DIE are racist fascists.
I think the perpetrators ARE mentally ill; they have nothing to gain from pushing the random strange on the tracks. They may be treated differently from white perpetrators however.
DEI is racist. Its racist proponents are on the lunatic far-left. Expect, they have power.
It’s not a programme to maintain the status of the educated elite. It exists because people refuse to call racists who are not white ‘racist’. It’s a bizarre superstition.
Tell me how DEI helps the black guy with mental health issues terrifying subway riders in NYC? Tell me how DEI helps a construction worker?
You enjoying hanging out with the racists, Jimmy? Feeling good about your choices?
Does your hatred of the concept of equality really drive you to be one of them?
Why are you such a gaping sphincter?
Equality is great. Equity not so much.
You really don’t get it, pal. Mudslingin’ don’t cut it.
Ya but … the New York Post covers all of these subway attacks. There’s usually photos within a day of the perpetrator. Undeniably, there’s an almost 100% correlation with a certain visible inherited trait. Awkward perhaps, but true.
That has nothing to do with DEI or blackness. Way more black people in the U.S. grow up in terrible poverty and live on the margins, even more so in NYC. What does DEI do to help those people? Bail reform, soft crime policies and failed mental health services have allowed deranged people to live in the streets in NYC.
I’d like to fully agree with you. That would be simpler and more risk free for me to do. But the niggling problem is, poverty, marginalization and lunacy affect people from many heritages. So subway attacks would presumably then be perpetrated by representatives of all those groups. But they seem to be almost all perpetrated by just one group. That suggests a cultural factor (not a racial or genetic factor, imo). I don’t know what that factor is, because for every hypothesis I can think of a counterargument.
Not all conservatives are racist but all racists are most certainly conservative…
Victor is an excellent representative of the MAGA cult which you people all subscribe too, Dumb, uneducated and irretrievably bigoted. Thankfully you are mostly very old too so we will soon be rid of you.
If we really are wanting total equality, then you cannot be hypocritical in believing only certain elements within our human species are capable of racism, violence and any any other undesirable human feature. Any and all of it, including racism, is and can be expressed by ANY human being Regardless of IDENTITY, colour, creed, sexuality, ethnicity or even political stance.
The first thing that comes out of the trap of all far-left racists is: ‘Only white people can be racist’
You are the only racist here. Shame on you.
Medium called, they want their comment troll back.
The attacks are part of a larger problem with the city’s approach to crime — one that won’t be resolved by the large-scale hassling of ordinary subway passengers by the US military.
.
What does this phrase mean? Is the purpose of American military service the large-scale hassling of ordinary citizens?
The author is saying that deploying military forces (see my comment about the distinction between US Military and National Guard) is not a long, or even medium term solution to this problem. Frankly, it’s probably not much of a short term solution either>
Given our founding documents, the Insurrection Act, Posse Comitatus and the repeal of George Bush’s adjustments to the Insurrection Act, it’s pretty clear the American people are NOT interested in the US military (or state guards) policing the citizenry. Hassling wasn’t the best choice of words, but as a service member, I’m not taking it personally
Wasn’t until Biden / Obama have taken over
A small nit. Reacting to this sentence:
“… one that won’t be resolved by the large-scale hassling of ordinary subway passengers by the US military”
The troops that have been deployed are under Title 32 authorities, not Title 10. This means they are ultimately under the command of Governor Hochul, not the President. It also means that the costs of this operation are at least in part (if not completely) paid for by New York taxpayers.
this is confusing because of the dual service nature of the National Guard. While they do have US Army and US Air Force on their uniforms, National Guardmen generally operate under the command of their state governor (while following Federal regulations and statute)
While it is very a small distinction, it’s an important one because it’s not a “US” militarization, it’s a NY State militarization. And gat means the leader who is accountable for the outcome will be Governor Hochul.
I think it’s also important if this were the US Military operating, it would require a presidential declaration via the Insurrection Act or congressional approval, as it would be violation of the Posse Comitatus act.
There’s a really obvious general point about people and social boundaries: if you let people get away with antisocial, violent or criminal behavior, there’s a lot who’ll do it. Since the woke-elite cultural revolution, that common sense has been lost sight of. The social contract has been rewritten too: it’s no longer about mutual respect, which everyone understands; but about a free pass for certain groups, based on ideological mumbo-jumbo forced on us by very-online moral elitists who have managed to grab power.
^Broken Windows Theory (1982)
And?
Ms Bowen is referring to the Giuliani-era policy that prosecuted small, anti-social crimes like vandalism and fare-jumping that lead to larger crimes. It was highly successful, and Bloomberg continued the policy. Then de Blasio was elected, abandoned it, and we are seeing the results.
Yes ok. I wasn’t sure if it was a criticism, an observation or an additional comment.
US and Commonwealth countries all used to be based on common law assumptions of self-control and a clear understanding that for legal purposes, the victim of crime was the one who had suffered the offence. So unlike today’s upside-down Democrat comics Sorosverse franchise, where the perpetrator is the real victim here.
I’m not sure if Giuliani’s innovation that crimes be prosecuted, only became novel because already New York was slipping into ideologically-driven consequence-free crime, or simply that policing and prosection wasn’t given the resources to work properly prior to his election?
It would seem to me that these homeless people/criminals want to be in prison where they are housed and fed. And are committed to repeat their offences. Why aren’t they locked up? Is it because it is cheaper to let them go? Bonkers.
conversation perfectly distilled the problem Democratic city leaders are now facing: how they can rein in crime while retaining their progressive bona fides….
Short answer….you can’t. They are at cross purposes with each other.
What happened? The obviously predictable, that’s what. You will always, always, always get more of what you allow.
Here in the U.K. the whole black population is now gainfully employed within the advertising industry. We find it works rather well.
“…a progressive attorney who argued that increased police presence makes some passengers feel less safe…”
There in a nutshell is the willfully perverse and obstinate mindset of the sophists who are quite literally destroying the country, largely for the sheer joy of obstruction.
Basically they have perverted the meaning of violence, hate, and safety and turned it upside down.
It is not just that criminality is tolerated in NYC – there is a full on assault by the Democrat party government against those individuals who resist the chaos. Jordan Neely gets mentioned in this piece as a long-time threat to subway riders. The real crime is that Daniel Penny is still on trial for killing Neely while protecting himself and fellow passengers. All NYC and NY state Democrats should suffer for this insanity in elections, but likely won’t.
“The government you elect is the government you deserve.”Thomas Jefferson
From a native New Yorker, listen and bear in mind: New York City and New York State are run by two people: Michael Bloomberg (the money) and Arthur Sulzberger III (the media, specifically the New York Times.) Nothing happens without the permission and intervention of those two. Which is why New York city has a low-functioning dolt like Eric Adams as its Mayor, and an upstate country clerk like Kathy Hochul as its Governor. Neither one of these two seat warmers is going anywhere without continually genuflecting to the two men they know are responsible to them being in their august positions. And you can rest assured that neither Bloomberg nor Sulzberger ride the subways. Ever.
The idea that more police make people feel less safe is laughable. More police, please.
DEI…..DDT….DIE