A rise in crime on rails worries commuters, draws officials' attention
Tuesday's chaotic scene on the N line at 36th Street Station in Brooklyn. In the first two months of 2022, the city's subway system saw a 73% increase in major felonies compared to the same period last year. Credit: AP/Will B. Wylde
Tuesday's mass shooting on a Brooklyn subway train came amid heightened concerns among commuters in recent months about an increase in crime in the MTA system, including on the Long Island Rail Road.
Major felonies on the LIRR grew by 7% last year compared with the previous year. Through February of this year, they rose by 350%, to nine, compared with two in the first two months of 2021.
Those figures include the first fatal shooting on an LIRR train in 28 years: In February, a 20-year-old man was shot and killed on a train at the Ronkonkoma station. Police have not arrested a suspect.
Crime concerns have been particularly pronounced in the New York City Transit subway system, which, in the first two months of 2022, saw a 73% increase in major felonies compared with the same period last year.
Charlton D’souza, president of Passengers United, an advocacy group, said the shooting Tuesday showed that recent efforts to make the subway system safer have been “a complete failure.”
“We want a police officer at every subway station 24 hours a day,” D’souza said.
On Tuesday morning on the N subway line at 36th Street in Brooklyn, a man donned a gas mask, shot at least 10 people and set off an apparent smoke bomb that injured several others, authorities said. The search continued for the shooter.
In February, following a string of violent crimes in the subway system — including the fatal shoving of a Manhattan woman onto tracks at a Times Square station — Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a new initiative to increase police presence on trains and in stations, improve homeless outreach efforts, and more strictly enforce subway rules.
MTA chairman and CEO Janno Lieber told CNN Tuesday that the strategy is already making a difference.
"Obviously, it didn’t stop this attack today, but we have already seen progress in this direction,” said Lieber, who noted that he grew up riding the subways in the 1970s. “The system is way safer than it was when I was a kid, but there are no questions that we’ve had some high-profile incidents and statistics that are alarming.”
Danny Pearlstein, spokesman for the Riders Alliance, a subway commuter advocacy group, implored the public to keep Tuesday’s events “in perspective.” He noted that the subway system remains far safer than it was "25 or 30 years ago."
"It's a place where millions of people congregate. . . . It's a public square. It's our common space. And, insofar as the city is vulnerable, the subway is vulnerable," Pearlstein said. "There's no guarantee that anything that the city or the MTA does can keep people perfectly safe in a public space."
Pearlstein expressed concern that the incident could further discourage people from using the subway. Two years after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, weekday subway ridership remains below 60% of 2019 levels.
MTA officials on Tuesday deferred questions about the shooting to the NYPD and limited their remarks mostly to service conditions. The shooting caused major disruptions and delays on several subway lines in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Speaking at a Brooklyn news conference Tuesday afternoon, Lieber praised subway workers for helping keep passengers safe, and subway riders for their efforts in tending to the victims.
“We saw New Yorkers, in a difficult situation, in an emergency, helping each other. That’s the subway riders. That’s who New Yorkers are,” he said.
It wasn't the first time the city’s subway system was the scene of a mass attack. In December 2017, a pipe bomb was detonated during the morning rush hour inside the subway station serving the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street. The explosion injured four people, including the attacker, who wore the bomb on his body.
The bomber, Akayed Ullah, 31, of Brooklyn, was sentenced to life in federal prison last year.
Tony Utano, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, said no transit workers were hurt in Tuesday's shooting — the latest in a "shocking and horrible burst of violence in our transit system."
"Our hearts and prayers are with the victims and their families," Utano said.
CORRECTION: The name of the advocacy group presided over by Charlton D’souza was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.
Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.
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