New York City has seen an increase in crime and robberies within the subway system over the past few months, violent crime increasing significantly compared to 2019 rates and ridership declining 40 percent from pre-pandemic populations. As a result of this, Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul have begun implementing a “subway safety plan” to remove over 1,000 homeless people that find shelter within the transit system. It is said that both police officers and mental health workers will contribute to this effort. Yet, this past weekend after the plan was announced, there were eight violent attacks on the subway, only one believed to be a homeless person. This raises a controversial question, is this plan effective?
Some believe that blaming public safety on homeless people can be both “cruel and inaccurate.” Josh Dean, an executive director of Human.nyc, states “Homeless people have become the scapegoat for an issue that has little to do with homelessness.” Some people begin to see a misleading correlation between rising crime rates and the new plan to remove homeless people, concluding that these acts of violence are entirely caused by homelessness.
Others point out the weakness of the plan, especially the addition of officers in subway systems to fix the problem. Mayor Adams, in last year's primary, stated that “We should have a police officer on every train” and deployed 1,000 officers in the transit system after taking office. However, some argue that additional officer presence cannot fix the root causes of the system. Elizabeth Glazer, a founder of a nonprofit focused on public safety policy, says “attacks like those over the weekend would be hard to predict or address in a systemic way, and that there were limits to what police could do… We have to have a more stable and considered way to address what we think is driving these incidents.”
This problem will not be fixed overnight and increasing violent crime has begun to decrease ridership even after Covid-19 regulations. Will New York City’s plan effectively decrease crime and increase subway-goer populations? Or, will necessary changes need to be implemented before change can result?
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