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Nicole Gelinas
Nicole Gelinas
Mayor Adams' administration is
gaslighting NYC on violent subway
Opinion crime

Mayor Adams’ administration is Michael Goodwin

gaslighting NYC on violent subway
crime
The media mob's free pass for the
Bidens at any sign of scrutiny is no
accident – they're all in on it
By Nicole Gelinas
Published March 24, 2024, 7:07 p.m. ET
Kirsten Fleming

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The Adams administration and the New York Times have been gaslighting New Yorkers into believing that subway crime
is rare, according to Post columnist Nicole Gelinas.

Christopher Sadowski
Browse Covers
After every violent subway crime, the New York Times tells us not to worry: Subway violence
is “perception,” not reality.
Trending Now
on NYPost.com
The Adams administration has joined the gaslighting, with officials promising us last month that things
were getting better; we just didn’t know it yet and had to trust them because we didn’t have the data. 74,887

Now we have the stats , and they’re bad.

How “rare” is subway crime? It’s so rare, the Times has to keep reminding us so.

In mid-March, after Gov. Hochul deployed the National Guard underground , the paper reassured us this
move was silly — “dramatically violent” incidents are “rare.”
Powerball jackpot winner's neighbors
A week earlier, another Times piece, rattling off four recent attacks — stabbing, hammer, slashing, bottle fear he could be abducted after
$1.765B prize: 'Keeping an eye out'
— told us they’re “rare.”

67,933
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don’t send in National by putting their rite of regulations
Guard, enforce ‘passage’ at risk
farebeating! 55,090

In February, after the year’s third random subway murder, the Times informed us ( twice ): “Killings on the
subway are rare.”

Earlier, after 2024’s second random subway murder, the paper told us underground violence is “especially
rare” and, for good measure, “especially unusual.”

Harry and Meghan’s pal claims royal

In January, after the year’s first random subway murder, we learned such subway shootings are — you family ‘lied’ to public about Kate
guessed it — “rare.” Middleton’s cancer diagnosis

The Adams administration has seized on this just-an-aberration take.

see also
In February, after the three subway murders in six weeks, NYPD
transit chief Michael Kemper assured the state-run Metropolitan
Transportation Authority things were getting better.

Mayor Adams has “deployed an additional upwards of over 1,000

uniformed officers into the transit system every day since the
beginning of this month,” he attested, in a “similar strategy to how we
mta
reversed the crime trend last year. Attacks in NYC transit
jump a massive 50% as
Itseems this tremendous investment is immediately paying dividends,” subway murders surge:
stats
showing a crime decrease of 18% percent compared with the previous
February.

We had to take his word for it, but no longer: The February numbers are out, for Monday’s MTA board
meeting.

Yes, it’s true, total felonies were down 15% in February compared with last February.

But serious violent crime — the crime people are scared about — wasn’t down.

In February 2024, transit riders or workers suffered 76 serious violent crimes: two murders, one rape, 38
robberies and 35 assaults.

That’s one more serious violent crime than in February 2023.

If this is the result the Adams police “surge” is getting, no wonder Hochul sent in the guard.

(In fact, police are enforcing the law, with record numbers of subway arrests and summonses; it’s just that
with revolving-door justice and mental health, the law isn’t staying enforced.)

The only crime that fell was grand larceny, nonviolent theft, from 98 to 70.

Well, so what? Pity about the murders, but 76 isn’t a high number. Isn’t serious transit crime still rare?

The salient question here is: “Rare” compared with what?

see also
Between 2004 and 2019, it took 15 years to accumulate 34 subway
homicides — the same number we’ve had in four years since 2020.

In 2024’s first two months, we had 183 serious violent subway crimes,
versus 144 during 2019’s same two months, before a slew of criminal-
“reforms,” like bail reform, fully kicked in.

Solution to subway That’s a 27% increase.

mayhem is simple —
don’t send in National
Guard, enforce But it’s higher when we account for today’s lower ridership.
farebeating!
This year, your chance of being a victim of serious violence is about
one in every million rides — nearly twice the rate of 2019, when it was
0.55 for every million.

So if you ride the subway 500 times annually back and forth to work, you’ve got a one-in-2,000 shot of
being a victim of a serious, injurious or fatal crime.

But also account for how many people are going to witness that crime.

Seriously mentally ill or drug- and alcohol-disinhibited perpetrators don’t seem deterred by crowds,
so dozens of people often witness their crimes.

Let’s call it 50 people who are going to be on or near the subway car or platform when a serious incident
occurs — and you’ve got a one-in-40 chance of a close brush with serious, potentially deadly, traumatic
violence.

Add in all the smaller incidents, including those that never make the stats — like my friend who reports he
was “slapped in the head by a group of teenagers looking for trouble in a subway station” — and it’s no
surprise fewer than half of New Yorkers feel safe on the daytime subways, down from 86% in 2008.

If subway violence becomes rare again, we won’t need to be told.

We’ll know it — by not being constantly menaced.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

Filed under crime eric adams mta new york times nypd subways 3/24/24

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Conversation 184 Comments

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Purple Jelly
15 hours ago
First off, I don't believe any of the stats. I believe what I see and what I see is violent crime
appening often and a lot in every borough straight across the city. Also, since crime is rarely
in NYC, it would make sense that the "stats" would indicate crime is low.
Reply 122 Share

Freedom Is Not Free

3 hours ago
Nearly every time I ride the subway, I see someone doing something illegal with the cops
the other way. It never used to be like that.

Ican’t really blame the cops. With the new catch and release/no bail system, why bother?
get the same result either way. The cops exist for show not...
See more
Reply 23 Share
1 reply

john russo
6 hours ago
Mayor Adams is just another usual suspect, you know how that ends
Reply 27 Share
1 reply
Show 4 more replies

Wolfman
14 hours ago
The authorities in San Francisco and Oakland where I live - cities which have seen severe
pticks in crime - are making the same claims - crime has gone down. These officials use crime
compiled by them, and wave them around at press conferences claiming crime is
control. Yet the o...
See more
Reply 85 Share

Cobra Wing
13 hours ago
Everything you said is 100% true! I live just north of you up in Santa Rosa and it's off the
insane up this way now too!
Reply 41 Share

Michael D
13 hours ago
The $15 congestion toll is forcing honest taxpayers to use the subway safe or not.

Immediate changes that will save taxpayers dollars : Demand all elected officials give up
details and use public transit.
Reply 69 Share

NYsportsfan
12 hours ago
Or move
Reply 16 Share
1 reply
Show 1 more reply

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