Headlines have been dominated by the promises of Governor Hochul in her “State of the State” address to place a police officer on every subway train from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. This comes on the heels of Ms. Hochul’s highly critiqued photo op, right before Christmas, as she rode on the subway to the Queens Center Mall to buy presents. 

Unlike all of us everyday riders, Ms. Hochul was accompanied by eight armed New York State troopers and was taking selfies with riders all along her trip to prove that crime is just our “perception.” Then, Governor Hochul announced that transit crime since January 2021 was down by 42 percent. Nobody believed it. 

Now, Ms. Hochul promises she would send in an additional 250 more guards. As we all have seen, they are like mannequins in the Macy’s Herald Square windows. They cannot make an arrest, and they cannot prevent fare evasion at a time when 30 percent of the riders refuse to pay their subway fares. The National Guards are supposed to search passenger bags, but if you object, you are instructed to leave the station without having your bad searched. 

The tiger has no teeth.  

The MTA chairman, Janno Lieber, who is driven around in a town car with armed MTA police, has the nerve to tell us that transit crime is down, and that crime is in the heads of the subway riders. Mayor Adams insists that subway crime has fallen for eight straight months. Adams boasts that he has added an additional 1,000 NYPD officers to do subway patrol, and that it is our perception that crime in the subway is still up. 

Subway riders have been asking for more cops for years. However, these cops do not walk through cars. They are stationed on the platforms and at the entrances to the stations, where minimal crime occurs. Many of them bury their heads in their cell phones as they cluster together, not walking the platforms.  

This is the problem. There are only 32,500 police officers available for patrol. Yet only 4,000 NYPD officers are assigned to the subways. To adequately patrol the streets and subways, the city needs a minimum of 38,000 police officers. The DeBlasio administration and the radical City Council defunded the police by $1 billion in 2020. Adams never put this money back into the NYPD budget. Instead, he spent $5 billion last year on the migrant crisis alone.  

Now, Governor Hochul is promising a police officer on every subway train at night. First, they will have to patrol in pairs. In June 2022, Adams made transit police patrol solo, to double the patrol area size. Adams dubbed it as “maximizing the deployment.“ This lasted all of 72 hours. A transit officer, while subduing a suspect by himself, fell down a flight of stairs, tragically injuring himself. The new deployment was then canceled. 

To be effective, this new police patrol in the subway must move up and down in the moving trains. On their patrol, officers will come across numbers of homeless people who have turned the subways into a moving hotel, as shelters are filled, and many are unsafe throughout New York City. Some are emotionally disturbed, and will have to be removed and taken to a nearby hospital for a psychological observation. That will remove cops from the transfer hours on end. 

If this program is to make a difference, you will first have to send homeless outreach workers to remove those in need of shelter. Mental healthcare workers will have to be deployed to help the mentally ill homeless who are a danger to themselves and riders. More than anything else, funds must be raised and used to train, vet and graduate into service 6,000 more police officers, ASAP. Without which, all you will do is rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.