Crime leaves the station.
The Big Apple has finally seen Metro-crime crater-with the figures that even immerse them under pre-Pandemic levels-a milestone that NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch has credited to a wave of police in the system on Thursday.
Tisch, during a press conference with mayor Eric Adams who revealed the first quarterly statistics of the city, said that the major violations in the metro in the metro with the metro fell by 18% at the second lowest level in 27 years.
“There have been zero murders in our subways this quarter, the first time that has happened since 2018,” she said, referring to the period over the first three months of the year.
“When we announced this plan together with the mayor in January, we promised real results and we got them.”
The transit safety plan that Tisch had unveiled in January came when New Yorkers were overwhelmed of fear after a wave of metro violence, including a woman who deadly put on a Brooklyn -Trainuto.
Tisch responded by focusing 200 agents on trains and platforms, and flooded hundreds more to transit Hubs to support a government Kathy Hochul-Simalized Plan to place two officers on Metro every night.
Straphangers have noticed a difference and the post told Thursday that they started less scared to take the trains.
“The metro feels a lot safer,”, newborn care specialist Carol Sparks, 69, who drives the metro five days a week from her Flatlands, Brooklyn, Home said in the Wall Street Station.
“There is not much abuse or people who are disturbing you,” she said. “More police is the answer. If there is more police, the metro is safer.”
Laci Komula, 36, a visitor from Louisville, Kentucky, in the city for the week with her 9 and 12-year-old sons, said she heard horror stories about random pushes and panhandlers who harass tourists.
But so far she is pleasantly surprised because she and her sons have caught the metro in the city, from South Ferry to the Natural History Museum on the Upper West Side.
“We have had no problems with the metro or walking around,” she said. “It feels like the fear has really fallen.”
However, the transit crime statistics have some important potential reservations.
SubWay Ridership is still under pre-Pandemic levels, data from metropolitan transport authorities shows what means that comparing crime levels may not be a correlation of apples-to-apples.
Ridership in March was around 111 million, about 23% less than the same month in 2019, according to data.
A general dip in transport crime may not be as important as the type of offenses, said Aaron Chalfin, assistant professor and graduated chairman of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Chalfin studies longer crime trends and has discovered that crime attacks in the metro system tripled from 2009 to 2023.
NYPD -crime data so far show 144 crime attacks in the metro system so far this year, about the same period in 2024.
But crime attacks increased by 6.7% compared to two years ago and no less than 54.8% compared to 2019, the data shows.
“This is actually a continuation of what we have seen (in our research) with theft that falls in the long term and the attacks rise,” said Chalfin.
“The decrease in total metrocrime is remarkable and must be understood in addition to a long -term increase in the underground attacks that dates from before the pandemic. The context remains important.”
And not all straphangers felt safe knowing that the metrocrime is trending.
“I am a short, single woman, so I never feel safe in the metro,” said Simone Marshall, 27, a content producer and myself described “incidental influencer”.
“Of course I am happy to hear that the metrocrime is no longer. I have certainly noticed many more agents in the stations, but the correlation is not the same as the causal context.”
In a statement, MTA chairman and CEO Janno Lieber greeted the data as ‘Great news for New Yorkers’.
“As we have said all year round, the steps that the Governor, the Town Hall, the NYPD and the MTA have taken work and make the system safer,” said Lieber. “Indeed, the crime numbers have crashed to register lows. And we are not yet ready. We will always continue to fight to ensure that crime continues to fall and we will continue to work with public prosecutor to ensure that everyone who commits a crime is held responsible.”
