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New York City’s subway crime drops by 17%

Laura Puttkamer

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New York City’s subway has a reputation for relatively high crime rates and even the occasional murder. Now, numbers show a significant improvement in subway crime: In February 2024, crime dropped by 17% after the city deployed 1,000 additional police officers.

New York City’s subway system is crucial to everyday life in the metropolis, but it has a bad reputation for being unsafe. This is not entirely unfounded: In 2024 alone, there have already been three murders on the subway. In addition, a series of high-profile shootings on the subway in the first two months of 2024 have shaken the city. As a response, the city sent 1,000 police officers to patrol the subway system. They seem to be making a dent in subway crime, with rates down 17% in February 2024, following a spike in January 2024. Compared to the same period in 2023, subway crime has decreased by 13% overall.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) runs the subway as well as buses and commuter rail lines in New York City. It has the task of boosting ridership in order to increase revenue collection. However, the violent incidents of early 2024 threaten progress and might deter potential riders. By March 2024, crime in the overall transit system plummeted 23.5%, which the Authority also credits to the additional uniformed police officers.

Enhancing public perception of safety

Between January 1, 2024, and March 31, 2024, a total of 538 subway crimes in New York City were recorded. This amounts to an average of six crimes a day, which is about 1.1% less than in past years. This decrease is particularly visible in major crime categories. Robbery halved and grand larceny dropped 15%. Similarly, felony assault on the New York subway dropped 11%. At the same time, arrests in the subway system are up by over 50% compared to last year. The numbers for gun arrests and fare-evasion arrests in particular have almost doubled.

According to New York City’s police department (NYPD), crime above ground has also declined. But in categories such as rape and bias attacks, they have increased. These changes in numbers, and especially the decrease in subway crime, comes after multiple new security initiatives. They are designed to enhance public perception of safety and ensure public safety in transit at the same time. A next step might consist of a gun scanner pilot, but there are still some procedural hurdles to overcome. Bag checks are another consideration.

Gun scanners and bag checks could also help to prevent subway crime. Credit: Patrick Robert Doyle via Unsplash

Safety begins at the turnstiles

Overall, subway crimes in New York City are relatively rare, especially when considering the daily subway ridership of around 3.2 million people  – some estimates even put the number closer to 4+ million. Most subway crimes happen when fare-beaters react to accusations. The Transport Authority wants to set an example against the sense of lawlessness in the subway system, saying “it begins at the turnstiles”.

“Public safety is the actual safety and it’s how people are feeling. […] If they don’t feel safe, then we’re not accomplishing our task. Stats don’t matter if people don’t believe they are in a safe environment”, a representative said. This is why it was important to the MTA to send in uniformed officers. As of March 28, they had seized 450 weapons.

New York City’s subway system is the largest and most travelled of the US. The Transport Authority sees the subway stations and trains not just as necessary means of transit, but as neighbourhoods unto themselves, with people going to their everyday destinations. “They are the people who make New York City great by keeping us all connected, one ride at a time”, a police representative explained.

Perceived safety is equally important as the actual safety on the subway. Credit: Aarzoo Jacob via Unsplash

New York City is performing well when it comes to gun violence

At the same time, New York City is concerned with its reputation. After false claims by former President Donald Trump that “murders and violent crime hit unimaginable records” in the city and the incidents in early 2024, the city wants to step up its safety and security levels. That also includes evaluating different ways of quantifying violence in a city and its public transport system. Gun violence tends to make the biggest headlines, but to understand its frequency, it makes sense to compare it to other cities of a comparable size. When it comes to gun homicide, New York City is performing better than any other big city in the country, according to a new study published in Nature Cities.

This study uses urban scaling theory, a new form of analysis that so far has mostly been used to research wealth distribution and population growth. By looking at almost 1,000 US cities, researchers studied different relationships between gun access, crime, and population for six years. Their modelling allowed them to compare the actual prevalence of gun violence in a given city to prediction by the model of how a city of its size would behave. One of the findings is that bigger cities tend to have more gun crimes per capita, despite having fewer guns per capita than rural areas. The reasons behind this have to do with increases in social interaction.

The lessons from New York City’s improvement in subway crime seem to be that the city is doing well with law enforcement and policy. In a country like the US, where violence and gun violence often feature in political narratives, it is important to look at these findings. This includes the perceived safety of people.

Read more: The subway can act as a neighbourhood, but also as a stage – learn more about the Global No Pants Subway Ride which started in New York City

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