By:  Ilana Siyance

Felony assaults in New York City’s subway system jumped by close to 22 percent in September, compared to September 2022, police and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced on Monday.

As reported by the NY Post, there were forty-five felony assaults reported in the subway system last month, compared to 37 such crimes in the same month last year – marking a 21.6% increase.  The new startling statistics, released Monday by the MTA, are also indicative of a spike in attacks on transit workers. From January to September, NYC saw a 3 percent increase in felony assaults on the subways overall — with 422 incidents reported this year compared to 411 during the same period last year, the data shows.

MTA employee attacks were a “notable driver” in the jump. Of the total incidents recorded between January and September, 41 of them targeted transit workers, the NYPD said. The previous year, there had been 34 assaults on MTA employees reported during the same months.  Train conductor Felix Ferdinand blamed the progressive criminal justice system reforms for making it easy for criminals to attack transit workers without serious consequences.

“A lot of people are getting let out due to our criminal justice system,” Ferdinand said Monday.  “Regardless what they do to us, even if it’s an assault … everything becomes harassment. So everybody just gets a slap on the wrist regardless of what they are doing.” Posters put up in the transit system warning that assaults on city workers are punishable by up to seven years in jail are just a “scare tactic” with no real application in today’s revolving door criminal justice system, Ferdinand told the Post.  In June, the train conductor had become a hero for having applied a tourniquet to a gunshot victim at the Rockaway Park – Beach 116th Street  subway station in Queens.

There was also some good news released in the NYPD transit data.  Shootings fell 62.5% this year compared to 2022, dropping from eight to three incidents, according to NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper.  He linked the decline to an increase in gun arrests in the system.  There were 37 gun arrests so far in 2023, up significantly from 24 during the same period in 2022, as per the Post.  In 2019 there were only 19 gun busts, marking a whopping 94% jump in arrests in 2023 compared to 2019.  Overall arrests in NYC transit were also up some 57%, up from 6,452 to 10,154 year-to-date, per the data.   Most notably, fare evasion arrests, leaped by roughly 143% so far this year compared to last, with 3,540 fare evasion arrests compared to 1,455.

The NYPD boasted that it has “increased officer deployment” in the Big Apple’s subway system also helping to tackle subway assaults.  There were 359 busts in relation to transit assaults between January and September, compared to 294 arrests in the same period in 2022.

Per the Post, Kemper also said that the NYPD, along with departments of Homeless Services, Health and Mental Hygiene and Bowery Residents Committee, have made 71,000 “contacts” in the transit system with homeless individuals or those suffering from mental illness.  At least 19,000 people “accepted shelter”, whether temporary or permanent, Kemper said.  This year a total of about 750 people were pulled out of the subway system and hospitalized for various reasons – ranging from injury to mental illness. Only about 90 of those hospitalizations were specifically for mental illness, he added.

The latest data shows that overall felony crimes in the city’s subway system – including murders, rapes, robberies and grand larcenies –were down by 5% in September.