Subways not 'dystopian hellscape,' MTA chief says, citing 7.8% crime drop

Crime in the New York City subway system is down 7.8% so far this year compared with the same period in 2023, officials announced Wednesday as Mayor Eric Adams said that some subway stations would have body scanners to search riders for weapons in the coming days.

Year to date, there were 1,215 transit crimes in 2023; in 2024 there have been 1,120 so far, according to the most recent NYPD statistics report. 

The decline comes as more police officers have been deployed into the system, making more arrests, seizing more weapons, and more aggressively enforcing laws against quality-of-life offenses and fare beating, Michael Kemper, the NYPD's chief of transit, said at a news conference in lower Manhattan at the Fulton transit center.

"Our goal is to deliver a subway system that is safe and feels safe," Kemper said.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the work-from-home revolution it catalyzed, led to a decline in ridership and a spike in crime. And with fewer passengers riding nowadays, the per capita risk is higher.

But in terms of the number of crimes, not factoring in the number of passengers, crime in the subway system is down 11% since 2019, the officials said at the news conference.

Earlier this year, reacting to high-profile and headline-grabbing crimes in the system, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that 1,000 state troopers, MTA police officers and National Guard personnel would help conduct bag searches.

And Adams said months ago that the body scanners would be installed in the system to compel randomly selected passengers to be scanned with a machine in order to enter. On Wednesday, he said that those scanners were now imminent. 

"They should be rolled out in the next few days to do our initial implementation," Adams said. He wasn't specific about the stations where the scanners would be installed.

Passengers who refuse to be scanned won't be allowed to enter through that section. The scanners are controversial because the false-positive rate is high, and anyone who sets off the scanner must submit to a police search.

Adams, a former transit cop, said he would strive for greater declines in crime in the subway system.

"We want zero crimes a day," Adams said. 

Janno Lieber, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's chairman and chief executive, said that not only is crime down, but there have been joint patrols between mental illness clinicians and the police to find mentally troubled people "who are struggling in the public space and need to be helped and also need to be out of the subway system so that the environment feels safer and more orderly."

Said Lieber: "Newsflash! It is not the dystopian hellscape that our friends in the tabloid media sometimes portray."

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.