New York City officials announced Monday that they plan to intensify a crackdown on subway fare evasion by sending at least 800 police officers to keep watch on turnstiles.
The operation is part of the city’s plan to address concerns about safety, crime, and unruliness in the nation’s busiest subway system.
“The tone of law and order starts at the turnstiles,” New York Police Department (NYPD) Transit Chief Michael Kemper said at a news conference. Chief of Patrol John Chell said the additional officers would fan out to various stations based on crime, ridership statistics, and community complaints.
Hours before the news conference, a man was stabbed multiple times on a subway train in a dispute over smoking. Hours after the conference, yet another person was shoved onto train tracks as a train was approaching, this time in East Harlem.
The victim of the unprovoked attack was pronounced dead at the scene, the NYPD said. A 45-year-old man was taken into custody.
Earlier this month, a woman was pushed onto the tracks at Fulton Street station by her boyfriend during a heated argument. She lost both her legs in the accident.
That incident happened just days after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, on March 6, announced a five-point plan to address rampant subway crime in the Big Apple. The plan includes the deployment of 1,000 State police, including 750 National Guard.
In recent weeks, the NYPD and Mayor Eric Adams, a former transit officer himself, have suggested a link exists between fare-skipping and violence on the trains.
Data shows that the crackdown on fare-skippers has already yielded results. Over 1,700 people have been arrested for turnstile jumping so far this year, compared to 965 at this time in 2023. As for fare evasion, police report that over 28,000 people have been ticketed so far this year.
To further deter fare evasion, the NYPD will deploy 800 uniformed and plainclothes officers to New York’s subway system this week.
Officials have complained for years that fare evasion amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars per year—money the city’s transit system can put to good use to keep its services and infrastructure in good working order.
When reports showed that those arrested for turnstile jumping were disproportionately Black and Hispanic people, some alleged that the problem was with the policing and not with those jumping the turnstiles.
Despite crime statistics going down, subway safety fears have proven difficult to put to rest after a spurt in crime after the COVID-19 lockdowns were lifted.
Police reports of major crimes in the transit system dropped slightly—nearly 3 percent—from 2022 to 2023, and officials said Monday that overall crime so far this month is down 15 percent compared to last year.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
