New York governor Kathy Hochul (D.) announced on Wednesday that she will send in National Guard troops and additional police officers to help secure New York City’s subway amid crime surges in recent months.
The governor will deploy 1,000 service members to patrol and "conduct bag checks in the city’s busiest stations," including 750 members of the New York National Guard and 250 officers from the State Police and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
"These brazen heinous attacks on our subway system will not be tolerated," Hochul said of recent subway homicides and assaults in the Big Apple, noting that "no one heading to their job or to visit family or go to a doctor appointment should worry that the person sitting next to them possesses a deadly weapon."
Hochul’s move came after New York City mayor Eric Adams (D.) last month dispatched 1,000 officers to the city’s subway stations in response to a spike in crime. "I’m on the subway system and I speak with riders. They say, ‘Eric, nothing makes us feel safer than seeing that officer at the token booth, walking through the system, walking through the trains’ and that is what we want our officers to do," Adams said at a Tuesday press conference.
Since January, the Big Apple’s underground transit system has seen three homicides as well as multiple felony assaults and grand larcenies. Last month, three suspected members of rival gangs fired nearly 20 shots during rush hour, killing one and injuring five. In January, a mob of teenagers set an elderly man’s hair on fire and brutally beat a Fox News meteorologist who tried to intervene.