It turns out that transit crime [in NYC] has been flat over the past two years while ridership has increased about 20%. […] The trendline of transit crime is down 13% over the past two years, and the most recent week had nearly the lowest crime rate of the entire period.
Hochul said on Wednesday that 750 national guard patrolmen as well as 250 state police and Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) officers will be deployed to patrol the stations and conduct bag checks.
“These brazen heinous attacks on our subway system will not be tolerated,” Hochul told a press conference.
Police accountability advocates decried the announced deployment. Robert Gangi, the founder of the Police Reform Organizing Project (Prop), said the added police presence would further criminalize Black and brown commuters, people who are already policed by NYPD officers.
Kathy Hochul’s mental model of the median NY voter is a 57-year-old white guy on Staten Island who watches too much Fox News. Panic and Republican-generated nonsense rule her world. Here she is reassuring business owners that the ruling against the Trump Organization does not reflect New York’s general attitude towards business. On the night before Christmas, not a creature was stirring, but her veto pen was at work on a bill making it easier for those who pled out to challenge their convictions, a law similar to the one that super-liberal Texas already has on its books. Koch-backed lobbying led to her signing a major corporate transparency bill only after access to the data was removed from the public and limited only to law enforcement and government agencies.
I was in NYC last Spring and rode the subway quite a bit, day and night, though admittedly not in what you’d consider a high-crime area. I felt pretty safe and nobody hassled me, and there were plenty of cops around. Adding national guard troops to rifle through my belongings would have made me feel less safe and more hassled.
I look forward to Tish James trouncing her in the 2026 Democratic primary, if Hochul has the guts to run.
What’s Next for Political Fundraising?
Baud
NY and NYC deserve better.
Dave
@Baud: Hochul has been such a disappointment. I didn’t have that high of expectations but man the entire NYS government (not entirely fair to the current NYS legislature) is basically pander to the status quo and make sure everyone with power keeps it beyond the baseline that you expect of that.
She had an opportunity to break with Cuomo and well this is what we have. And of course the GOP is batshit; gives me a bit of sympathy for those that don’t want to vote for the lesser of two bad choices.
strange visitor (from another planet)
they’ve been doing random bag checks for DECADES. they’ve ALSO had national guard and state police in the large, vital stations for the holidays or when the threat level was high.
she’s not a very good governor, but she’s better than cuomo. mayor cop sucks.
i don’t think a lot of the jackalariat understands nyc much at all.
japa21
@strange visitor (from another planet):
The old damning with faint praise route. Kind of the same way we looked at Manchin or Sinema.
Shantanu Saha
I’ve ridden the NYC Subway for the last 12 years continuously and for many years before that in order to commute to work. I have never felt unsafe in either subway stations or trains, though I’ve sometimes felt annoyed by god-bothering riders spouting their religious lunacy to the temporarily captive audiences, and sometimes there is an unfortunate odor in the car I’m occupying. And since I rode the subways as a kid in the 70s when they were all graffiti-covered hell cabs, the current rolling stock is much easier on the eye.
HinTN
@Shantanu Saha:
Maybe you should break into song. Everybody would surely join in to, “I am the captain of the Pinafore…” and drown the god-botherer right out. 🙄
davek319
@Dave: HoHum Hochul is another Rockefeller Republican the actual repubs turfed outta their party in the Age Of Gingrich. Never met a panicky rage-blast of CrimeCrimeCrime from the metro media regions she didn’t immediatly reflexively collapse before, while actively protecting from recall Dem party chair Jay Jacobs, locked in his never ending fight not against his party’s true enemy–THE OTHER PARTY–but the Reds! In My Head! NClang! In other words, the psychosis that marks the Andrew Cuomo Democrats here…
piratedan
I guess this is what it looks like when Dems do performative security theatre… at least there’s no razor wire involved.
Leto
@strange visitor (from another planet):
I understand the optics of having 750 military just milling around with their fucking thumbs up their asses. Bag checks isn’t the mission of the National Guard. NYC spends $29M a day for the cops. If you’re resorting to spending the additional money to call up (put on active duty), feed, and house the NG for X amount of time, and you’re still spending $29M a day for your cops… you’re fucking up.
I don’t think a lot of the jacklariat or maybe just a few, understand the mission of the National Guard.
Lyrebird
Yeah. I am glad we no longer have a harasser creep pandering autocrat as gov., but I also had hopes that Gov. Hochul would aim higher than non-criminal non-creepy pandering autocrat.
Her appointees that have had jurisdiction over my family have been dis-appointing for sure. Some PAC had the ever-loving nerve to send me mailers to call my (wonderful) state rep to tell him to support Hochul’s budget. I didn’t call to give them a piece of my mind, because I knew I might regret it, and I feared paybacks. I might need a state job one of these days.
RandomMonster
I love that movie, BTW.
MomSense
@strange visitor (from another planet):
I was going to say that the perception of the subway being unsafe is what is happening here and NYers have experience with National Guard and police presence at major stations.
She’s trying to get ahead of an issue that is being exploited.
Captain C
Regarding the new/revamped security theater-playing in the subways: pretty much anyone who uses the system on the regular knows that if you need to sneak something nefarious in and there are too many cops/guards in the station, there’s almost surely another unguarded station within 5-10 blocks (i.e. a 5-10 minute walk). All it does is make life slightly more inconvenient for drug delivery people.
Parfigliano
“Random bag checks” isnt that pretty phrasing for warrantless searches. Fuck that shit.
trollhattan
Brazen Heinous my favorite kebab joint.
Bill Arnold
@HinTN:
Make it easy, like “Happy Birthday”.
Or “Row row row your boat”.
Emily B.
National Guard members and state police officers checking bags in subway stations? New York has already had its issues with stop and frisk. What could possibly go wrong?
Also, even 1,000 cops and troops are not going to go very far in a subway system with 472 stations. In reality they’ll be concentrated in Times Square and a few other tourist-frequented stations. This is all performative security for out-of-towners.
Harrison Wesley
In the many years I lived in Philly, I never had the slightest desire to move to NYC. And I even got mugged in the subway once.
WV Blondie
@MomSense: Hochul was on Morning Blow this morning and said it was about perception of crime, not the crime rate itself. So yes, I agree, she’s trying to preemptively show she responds even to Faux Noise viewers’ concerns.
Baud
@MomSense:
@WV Blondie:
Interesting. I hope it works.
Harrison Wesley
@Parfigliano: I’ve occasionally reached down and grabbed myself. An old guy can never be too sure.
Ohio Mom
@Shantanu Saha: Me too. I moved out of NYC in my early twenties, but spent the mid 1960s through the end of the 1970s traveling on the subway and have no tales to tell.
My main memory is that the only graffiti were small black magic-marked “Taki 183” scribbled in half-hidden places, say, in corners of a column, and then one day, POW, swirly, multi-colored sprayed painted graffiti covering entire trains, inside and out, roaring into the station. Nowadays, I think of it as Folk art on wheels.
I mean, as a subway rider, I knew to be aware, and to do things like switch cars if I could if someone who creeped me out entered the car I was in, but really, in the end, pretty similar to how I drive my car nowadays. I stay aware and if there is another driver doing things I don’t like (speeding, tailgating, weaving, etc.), I give them wide berth.
The subway was a magic carpet to me, transporting me out of Queens and into many wonderful adventures, both with friends and on my own.
RedDirtGirl
@Shantanu Saha: This morning two young LDS on mission in the Big Bad City went down the subway car asking each and every person if they wanted to go to church. I said, “Not with a complete stranger, thank you.” and went back to my book. Everyone on the train was exchanging looks with each other over their odd approach. I’ve seen a lot of LDS around, but these guys seemed really out of their depth. Nervous, jumpy, getting in everyone’s face to try to make eye contact. I felt like it was their first day and they thought they needed to make a quota.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Leto: of course they’re fucking up. crime just isn’t really an issue in nyc no matter how hard the media tries to make it one. there was an uptick during peak plague, but we’re at like, a sixty year low.
people used to pull their car radios and hide their jewelry all the time.
people blithely walk around with six or seven hundred dollars of electronics just sort of asking to get robbed, but they don’t.
and yeah. some of you guys talk about the trauma white america endured and how they completely lost their minds and turned to fascism bc a black guy got elected president.
nyc is a relatively conservative city. it’s the media and financial capital of the country and possibly the world. there’s some SERIOUSLY old money undergirding the sprawl.
imagine the shock to the system when we elected a black mayor.
the city, we are still dealing with the repercussions of that and the ridiculously huge backlash.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Parfigliano: stop-and-frisk by another name.
John Revolta
@Captain C:
Oh, that’s all, huh?
Jeez, I thought this was a Liberal blog. Balloon Juice, you used to be cool. *sadly shakes head*
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@strange visitor (from another planet):
A number of people I follow on twitter in NYC have made that exact comparison.
Another guy from Chicago:
ema
@Emily B.:
It’s a voluntary search. You can refuse, but you have to leave the station:
Stopped riders will be able to refuse a bag check, however, they will be unable to enter the station until they give consent. “They can refuse,” said Governor Hochul. “We can refuse them. They can walk.”
Clueless person: I have no evidence a camera in every subway car and a National Guardsman/NYPD officer in your bag are effective in preventing crime, but you peasants can just walk.
Renie
First, I love the Pelham movies; original & remake.
I use to ride the subways in the 70s and 80s. That was a horror. Don’t see any reason today to send in the Nat’l Guard because of “perception” of more crime. If they start checking a lot of bags, commuters will revolt unless of course, it’s done only by ‘profiling’.
Hochul has been a complete disappointment. We need someone good to primary her in 2026.
lowtechcyclist
@RandomMonster:
I”ve never seen it. Isn’t it from, like, 50+ years ago? The ‘one million dollars‘ gives me serious Dr. Evil vibes!
At the time, I thought ‘Pelham one two three’ was one of those new multiplexes. (Never saw an ad, never read a review, just saw the name in the movie listings.) They were just coming into being, and tended to only have three or four screens back then.
TiredOfItAll
Been in the city 40 years. Never an issue. Closest I ever came to a murder was when I contemplated taking out the Food for Life clown. (IYKYK) Hochul and Adams have been abysmal.
MomSense
@John Revolta:
It’s security theater and we jackals know it’s bullshit but the news media reports anecdata especially about crime. Right now it’s all illegals killed college girls and attacks on the subway. So I guess I’m resigned to the theater because we have to fucking win all the races we possibly can in November and I have found that any type of response that starts with actually crime rates are lower than… isn’t especially effective.
Ksmiami
hang the DJ…hang the DJ…
Hob
A lot of the crimes they’re pointing to for justification were ones that, as far as I can tell, wouldn’t have been stopped by bag checks at all. People being punched, pushed, kicked, choked, hit with bottles, or slashed with a box cutter which as far as I can tell is not considered a weapon under NYMTA rules. And if someone wants to board with a knife, it’s not hard to just enter at a station that isn’t a major station.
I lived in NYC for 13 years. All I can say to “strange visitor”‘s statement that a National Guard presence isn’t unusual “for the holidays or when the threat level was high” is that 1. seeing NG troops armed with rifles in the subway was a rare and weird and alarming experience for me, except right after the 9/11 attacks, 2. I absolutely never saw anyone other than cops doing this stop-and-frisk type of stuff, 3. as much as I distrust NYC cops, I can’t imagine having searches done by NG troops— who have no experience or training relevant to this, and are even more likely than the cops to see the city as unfamiliar territory— will be less prone to abuse.
rivers
I have been riding the subways for 55 years. I’ve had a few uncomfortable experiences in that time and a number of occasions when I got off a car because someone was behaving freakily. But that’s 55 years – and for much of that time I took it daily. I still take it 2 or 3 times a week. I get so furious when I hear people from elsewhere talk about how dangerous the subways are. And I’m currently furious at Kathy Hochul for this completely unnecessary step.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Hob: yeah. so i’m a born and bred nyer. brooklyn for over 50 years. first of all, i didn’t SAY that the national guard was doing the bag searching. NYPD does it. they’ve been doing it for a VERY long time.
that being said. since 9/11, just about every major holiday and DEFINITELY when the threat level is elevated, the national guard and state police have a presence in grand central, herald square, 42nd, union square, atlantic ave and others.
jowriter
@Ohio Mom: Taki 183 was, of course, legend. So were the Keith Haring figures on the unused ad frames in subway stations and on the streets in Manhattan and Soho. A prescient art lover might have carved a few of those Harings out of the infrastructure, but most people wondered who was doing that. This was supposedly NYC’s most dangerous decade (70’s) but also the most fun for a twenty-something which I, fortunately, was. I am not thrilled about Hochul but I also believe she’s trying to get out ahead of the “rampant crime and mayhem” GQP ads that littered the airwaves and my mailbox in the ’22 election and brought us gems such as Mike Lawler in my own NY-17. We have to win back those seats. I’ll chill about the National Guard for now.
bbleh
@Shantanu Saha: @Ohio Mom: THANK YOU for saying this. Mah gah, the vast majority of NYC is Disney New York World at this point. And I cannot believe it when people in my current benighted area of the country start talking about what happens in New York. I’m so scornful in my replies that they take offense. Alas, they are ignorant fools.
dimmsdale
@rivers: Right there with ya. There IS an epidemic of fare beating, but the recently mobilized cop swarm did next to nothing to remedy that (thank you Mayor Adams for shoveling all that overtime to ineffectual, standing-around-doing-nothing cops, money that could have been used for, I dunno, helping the homeless maybe). But Hochl’s even MORE ineffectual National Guard mobilization is a loose-cannon response to a non-existent problem that wastes money in a most visible and extravagant fashion, simply (as mentioned) to placate Pennsyltucky upstaters who come into the city once a decade, if then. Can’t wait to vote against her AND Adams!
TheTruffle
I hope Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado runs in 2026.