Unprovoked attacks in subway are front and center in NYC mayor's race

[RandySF]

A rise in unprovoked attacks on subway riders since the COVID-19 pandemic has made concerns over public safety on mass transit a central — if not unavoidable — issue in New York City's mayoral race.

Candidates in the race are by and large drawing a direct line to subway crime with the city’s stubbornly high homeless population who seek shelter in trains and stations. But the City Hall hopefuls vary on how to manage the crisis, with some calling to flood the system with police and others promising a historically large deployment of mental health professionals.

Subway safety is proving to be a key concern for New Yorkers this year. An Emerson College poll in March estimated 48% of registered city voters thought the subways were becoming less safe, compared to 32% who thought they were becoming safer. The topic has also drawn the attention of U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who on Friday took a brief subway ride with Mayor Eric Adams after threatening to withhold federal funding from the MTA unless officials submit a plan to address transit crime (the agency complied).

The NYPD reported 10 murders in the subway system in 2024, tying a record set in 2022 for the most in a calendar year since the department took control of transit policing in the mid-1990s. The subways saw 579 felony assaults last year, which also set a record. The city has over the last five years seen a string of straphangers randomly shoved onto subway tracks by people suffering with a mental illness. In January, a 23-year-old woman survived being pushed off a platform and in front of an A train in Washington Heights by a man who was later deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.






https://gothamist.com/news/unprovoked-attacks-in-subway-are-front-and-center-in-nyc-mayors-race

[Scrivener7]

1. BUT to put that into perspective, there were 579 felony assaults out of over a billion rides.

There were 1.15 billion rides in 2023. So probably more now.
https://www.mta.info/agency/new-york-city-transit/subway-bus-ridership-2023

SO that's a felony assault for about every 2 million rides. That seems pretty safe to me.

Maybe it's because I've been riding the subway since the bad old days in the 70s and 80s when the city was falling apart, but I think New Yorkers are being weenies about this.

[RandySF]

2. After a woman was burned alive?

[Scrivener7]

3. Walking around outside the subway, there were 7.5 murders per 100,000 Americans

in 2022. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm I imagine at least one of those was someone burned alive.

Your OP quotes 10 murders on the subway in 2024. Over more than a billion rides.

By all means, we need to increase our care of the mentally ill in our area.

But as an American, you're safer on the subway than off it. By a large margin.

[MichMan]

4. A billion rides does not equal a billion people

[Scrivener7]

5. OK, so figure the average rider takes 480 rides a year. That's extremely generous,

because many, many people take many, many fewer rides than that. For example, if I take 4 rides a month these days, it's a lot.

But suppose we're figuring each rider takes two rides a day, 5 days a week, for 48 weeks of the year, figuring for vacations, sick days, etc. That's still 10 murders for about two and a half million people.

Outside the subway, there are 7.5 murders for 100,000 people.

Still a LOT safer on the subway than off.

[MichMan]

6. Not sure that is a winning political message

"You think the subway is dangerous; it's way safer than city streets !"

[Scrivener7]

7. Not "city streets." America in general. In the United States overall, there are

7.5 murders per 100,000. So the subway is enormously safer than the average American location. That's not a bad political message at all.

The "crime is out of control!!1!" message is a republiQan trope to keep us frightened and to make us want to give cops armor and tanks. All the better if they can make people believe it about a blue city.

And as far as the overall threat of violence, again, we're talking about 579 assaults taking place in a system that handles over a billion rides a year. Again, that's pretty safe.

We're often fed bogus statistics in this argument like "a gazillion percent increase in crime since 2020." Well yes. That's because no one was riding in 2020. The problem is, most people believe it. But look at current numbers against 2019 and you will see a very different story.