“Where are the National Guard and State Troopers on the Subways We Were Promised?” NYC Reporters Ask

By Yehudit Garmaise

Were the 750 National Guard members, additional state troopers, and 1,000 extra police on the subways only on the job for a one-day photo opportunity, many New Yorkers wonder, after terrified commuters heading home to Brooklyn last Thursday had to duck for cover both on the train and on the platform when a 32-year-old man fired four shots from the gun he grabbed from a 36-year-old man, during a dispute over a subway seat in which he was stabbed by a female passenger.

Unsurprisingly, the 36-year-old entered the subway at the Nostrand Avenue station ten to 15 minutes earlier without paying his fare, said NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, who added that enforcing fare evasion could result in stopping armed passengers from riding the subway.

While subway commuters have long waited for police to enforce fare evasion to prevent passengers who are likely to engage in more violent criminal behavior from riding the subway, on March 6, Gov. Kathy Hochul promised New Yorkers that 750 State Police and National Guard members would be checking commuters’ bag at the city’s busiest subway stations.

Ever since March 6, however, subway riders have been looking around to see only a sprinkling of extra uniformed police officers standing around lackadaisically at a few stations.

Commuters never seem to see police officers walking through or riding the trains, where not only much of the transit crimes take place, but where riders feel most uneasy.

“We don’t see any National Guard Members, nor state troopers, in Downtown Brooklyn, and we don’t see any in Harlem,” one reporter commented. “Who determines where the extra troops go?”

“We need to utilize the [police officers] where they are most welcomed and in large volumes of crowds,” said the mayor, who commented that if people on Utica Avenue saw National Guard members, “Folks would have a fit.”

Penn Station, Times Square, Grand Central Station, the mayor said, where people are used to large crowds, are “perfect fits” for the National Guard members and state troopers, whom Adams said, “would send the right message without being overwhelming, nor intimidating. 

“I don’t think 7th Avenue on the D needs a National Guard person there. They need a police officer walking up and down the trains and the platforms, which people are used to seeing and comfortable seeing.”

Last week in Brooklyn, however, this reporter only saw a few police officers sometimes within stations and not on platforms, and never walking through the trains, where most transit riders feel uneasy.

Amidst semi-regular random acts of violence, how can Mayor Adams help New Yorkers feel safe riding the subway?

“I don’t care whether they are security guards, state troopers, the National Guard,” the mayor responded. “Whatever it is that will make New Yorkers feel safe to match the success we have had, I am all for it.”

The mayor talked about increasing uniformed NYPD officers underground by being smarter about where cops are deployed. 

“We put 1,000 new officers in the system,” said Mayor Adams who emphasized that those officers are much better deployed on subways than, for instance at parades or at scenes of crimes that have already been resolved.

To determine where the 1,000 extra police officers underground are stationed, NYPD Chief of Transit Michael Kemper and NYPD Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LiPetri send officers to subways on which previous crimes have taken place at the times those crimes have taken place, explained the mayor, who touted the chief’s strategy as the key to the NYPD’s success in increasing subway safety.

How are commuters to feel, however, when a couple starts to scream, argue, and punch another on a Brooklyn train, as this reporter observed before quickly moving to another car?

When the train stops, we continue to scurry from one subway car to the next: hoping and praying that the argument we just witnessed won’t be the one that ends with stabbings and shootings.