Will Increasing Police Presence Reduce Crime on New York City Subways?

The short answer—probably not.

After this week’s shooting in a Brooklyn subway station, New York City Mayor Eric Adams vowed to continue increasing police presence on subways to curb crimes.

This might sound like a decent first step, but it has proven to be ineffective. In January, Mayor Adams deployed more NYPD officers to patrol the subways. “Omnipresence is the key,” Mr. Adams told the New York Times. “People feel the system is not safe because they don’t see officers. We’re going to bring a visual presence to our systems.”

Four months after the mayor ordered a larger police presence, Frank James, 62, boarded the N train, set off a smoke bomb, and shot 10 people while the train was in the tunnel. How would officers know that havoc would unfold after the train left the platform they were standing on? And if they were on the train when the incident occurred, what could they have done that wouldn’t have risked the lives of the innocent riders? Would more bullets fly? Would there have been fatalities?

Increasing the NYPD’s presence on the train is just a façade designed to get MTA ridership back up since the plummet from the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of decreasing crime, cops in the subway are just giving tickets to people who jump the turnstile (known as ‘fare-evaders’) and kicking homeless people out of the station. This approach is a sign of the return of ‘broken-windows’ policing from the 1990’s, which had detrimental effects for Black and Brown people that they are still suffering from.

In short—New York City is suffering from a mental health crisis. Instead of utilizing resources to add cops to train stations, we must invest in social services that help with housing and mental health. Cops are merely a flimsy band-aid on a gaping wound; a short-term ‘solution’ to a long-term problem.