Crime and violence in New York City’s subway system have spiraled out of control and are “significantly higher” than the agency’s official numbers have publicly indicated, according to a New York Police Department (NYPD) source.
The official number of arrests made in the city’s subway system rose by 45 percent this year, with more than 3,000 arrests made underground in the first two months of the year, many of them of repeat offenders, according to figures released by the NYPD Transit Bureau. However, the publicly released data only scratch the surface of the amount of crime in the nation’s largest transit system, a law enforcement source told The Epoch Times.
“The numbers they are putting out are a complete joke and everyone knows it,” the source, who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution, said. “The sense of lawlessness (on the subway) is so bad that unless you have personal experience in the system, especially at night, it is impossible to understand.
“It’s like the Wild West.”
NYPD officers have also been incentivized to not report minor offenses in an effort to keep the numbers as low as possible, according to the source, who said pressure has come from higher-ups to maintain the narrative that crime has plateaued or is going down.
However, not even the city’s own agencies can agree on how much crime is occurring in the subway system. After Transit released figures showing that violent subway crimes went up by 13 percent this year, the mayor’s office quickly pushed back, disputing the numbers released by the agency and claiming that crime actually dropped last month.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police chief, said that “overall crime is down.”
However, a “significant majority” of the crimes that do occur on the subway go unreported by the victims, according to the source.
“People understand that the majority of those who commit larceny or assaults are never going to be apprehended, so why go through the trouble of making a report?” the source said.
The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The topic of commuter safety has risen to the forefront of the national dialogue after several recent high-profile crimes in New York’s subway system, including a shooting caught on film at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in Brooklyn on March 14 during a rush-hour commute.
The crime spree provoked New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to order 750 New York National Guard troops and 250 New York State Police troopers be deployed into the subway system to conduct bag searches and combat the surge in crime. The new deployment is in addition to the 1,000 New York City police officers who were ordered to patrol subway lines and do security checks on bags.
“Since taking office, I have been laser-focused on driving down subway crime and protecting New Yorkers,” Mrs. Hochul told reporters at the March 6 news conference. “I am sending a message to all New Yorkers: I will not stop working to keep you safe and restore your peace of mind whenever you walk through those turnstiles.”
“No one heading to their job, or to visit family, or to go to a doctor’s appointment should worry that the person sitting next to them possesses a deadly weapon.”
Morale among NYPD officers is at an all-time low as crime and police resignations have been on the upswing, according to officials.
In recent years, an increasing number of New Yorkers, including police, have been assaulted. From Jan. 1 to March 31, 2023, citywide, 1,251 on- and off-duty police were assaulted, compared with 949 in the first quarter of 2022, according to NYPD crime statistics.
A total of 2,516 officers resigned from the department in 2023, according to police pension data previously obtained by The Epoch Times. It is the fourth most in the past decade and 43 percent more than the 1,750 who resigned their positions in 2018. Further, the data show that the number of officers quitting before they reach the 20 years required to receive their full pensions has increased by 104 percent since 2020.
In January, officers’ jobs became more difficult after the New York City Council pushed through controversial legislation dubbed the “How Many Stops Act,” which requires police to officially document any encounter they have with the public, including logging the race, gender, and age of any person to whom they speak.
The recent exodus comes on top of years of officer attrition, eroding the ability of the nation’s largest police force to serve and protect to dangerous levels, according to Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry.
“This is truly a disaster for every New Yorker who cares about safe streets,” Mr. Hendry previously told The Epoch Times. “Cops are already stretched to our breaking point, and these cuts will return us to staffing levels we haven’t seen since the crime epidemic of the ’80s and ’90s.”
