Major Subway Crime Down 16 Percent Since Cops, Cameras and Care Initiative Announced in October, Compared to Same Time Period in Prior Year

Crime Rate on Subway Returning to Pre-Pandemic Levels

Second Lowest Level of Transit Crime in Any January Since 1993

650 Unhoused New Yorkers Connected with Critical Intervention Services

Governor Hochul: "We've been making progress. We've been making real progress. Now we'll stand here, we'll say we're never finished. As long as there is any crime being committed, we'll never say, 'Mission accomplished.' Those words will never come from our lips. But today's an opportunity to give a progress report, and we're going to continue doing this."

Hochul: "We've had a robust year of ridership. Riders are coming back. We're making a difference, helping New Yorkers be safer and feel safer. And again, we're going to continue applying the lessons we learned...The most aggressive approach the State of New York has taken to dealing with the issue of mental health since the deinstitutionalization of the 1970s. We are leaning hard on this."

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams announced new data that shows significant progress on subway and transit public safety initiatives introduced last year. Last October, the Governor and Mayor announced that the NYPD and the MTAPD would surge officer presence on platforms while expanding capacity at the New York State Office of Mental Health to support unhoused individuals who are sheltering in the subway system and those who are suffering from severe mental illness. Additionally, Governor Hochul announced that teams deployed after October 2022 have helped more than 650 unhoused high-needs New Yorkers connect with critical intervention services.  

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Delighted to be back here with the Mayor once again at this very station. You know, we worked together intensely since his first week on the job. It's hard to believe it's already been a year, Mayor, and congratulations on an outstanding State of the City address yesterday.

So, it's great to be back with you again. I would like to acknowledge Janno Lieber, the Chair and CEO of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, better known to all of us as the MTA. We've been together often as well. So, one was just this week when we had the soft opening of Grand Central Madison and what an extraordinary experience that was. So, Janno, thank you and your team for all you do. Keeping us safe here, but also keeping us moving. Also, Chief Michael Kempner, the Chief of Transit has joined us as well. I want to thank him.

And also from our team, our Commissioner of New York State Office of Mental Health, Dr. Ann Marie Sullivan, who has been laser-focused on helping us deal with statewide, but in particular here in our subways, the crisis of mental health has been unfolding for a number of years, but has really hit a situation that has to be addressed.

So, we're back here. I'm here just to give a status report. You know, we stood here back in January. We talked about our partnership. We stood here in February talking about how we were launching our Safe Options Support teams, sending trained professionals to go into our subways to develop relationships with people, not just a one-off, but develop relationships that can result ultimately people getting the care and the service they need. Basically, the people who have been homeless, who are dealing with severe mental illness. So, we have been working very hard on that and also connecting those New Yorkers with supportive services and whether it's mental health or substance. And making sure that even ultimately, they get connected to not just housing, but job training and skills and education, treating these individuals as people who deserve to know what is available to them. And already since we launched this, we've helped over 650 individuals, formally unhoused high-need New Yorkers connect with Critical Intervention Services. So, that was what we talked about last February.

In October, the Mayor and I stood in Grand Central talking about our strategy to increase people's sense of security, but also the actual security of individuals who take advantage of this incredible lifeline to New York, the MTA. And we knew how important this was at a time, especially when we're stressed about whether or not we're going to ever have the same number of riders and people coming back to our business districts because of the pandemic. So, there's been a lot of shifts in society and how we work and where we work. And we wanted to make sure as we're trying to attract people to come back, we had to be able to answer the question: Will I be safe? Is my child safe going to school? And say, we had to answer that with a resounding, "Yes." And that is why we came together to announce our Cops, Cameras and Care Initiative just in October.

And what that was all about was, first of all, boosting the police presence. People feel better just like I did when I came down on the number four train. I can't tell you how many times I heard someone say, "If you need assistance, there's a police officer on the platform in the mezzanine," and I'm looking around me. Of course, I was surrounded by a few more police than usual, but I wanted people to have that sense of if you need help, it's there. But also, if you're someone looking to do harm to somebody, that's a powerful deterrent when you know there's a police officer right there either in the train, the platform or the mezzanine.

So, that was an important part of it. Beefing up our police forces, bringing in our resources from MTA transit, but also assisting the Mayor to be able to add more people to his team as well. We talked about the need to have cameras. We've been aggressively installing more and more cameras on an expedited timetable. I wanted to go faster and make sure that, you know, that we have information available if we do need to solve a crime. And again, another deterrent, if you know that what you're doing to hurt someone else or cause a problem is going to be captured on camera.

Also, as I mentioned, we launched what we called a "Transition to Home" initiative where we had a new treatment program for inpatient care for those experiencing serious mental illness as part of our care program, and also making sure we have training. Now, this is important training for our clinicians, law enforcement professionals, also the MTA workers who come in contact with, so they know what their rights as individuals are and help the people who are unhoused deal with mental illness. And again, I want to thank the Office of Mental Health for leading the trainings. Again, you would assume they know, but don't assume that. You have to have a training program so everyone who comes in contact with our passengers knows how to respond in a situation where it's required.

So, we've been making progress. We've been making real progress. Now we'll stand here, we'll say we're never finished. As long as there is any crime being committed, we'll never say, "Mission accomplished." Those words will never come from our lips. But today's an opportunity to give a progress report, and we're going to continue doing this. We're going to keep being honest with you, letting you know when we see data that says things are heading in a wrong direction, we'll talk about that, what our next strategy is. But when things are improving, that's something we also want to make sure it gets out to the general public.

So, we have seen a 16 percent drop in subway crime. We have some charts that you can look at. That's just since the beginning of October from the previous year. Major crimes on the subway since we started our initiative to bring more police officers and resources to the subway, major crimes on the subway are down 28 percent since October. That's not over a year. That's just in a very short time. The success of when you work together, pool our resources, city and state, approach this in a collaborative way where we bring all of our resources and start making a difference. So regardless of our seasonal trends, that's very encouraging, major crimes are down 16 percent as I said, but also the crimes per million riders. This is what's interesting. I'm going to go out on a limb here. If you did a survey of how people feel about their security on the subway, say in February of 2020, before the pandemic, I'm not sure it would be on their top list, insecurity and concern about crime.

So, people had this kind of, yes, it's New York. It's not always perfect. We're an imperfect place sometimes. But I don't think it was that same level of anxiety that has occurred during the pandemic. When you think about it, there were fewer riders, fewer people with jobs, more people that may have been doing harm to those who were on the subways during that time. So that was kind of an unusual timeframe. It's almost hard to compare ourselves to that timeframe because they were extraordinary circumstances. But what we want to talk about is before the pandemic, there were 1.5 million crimes per one million riders. Not 1.5 crimes. Alright, let me restart this. I would never have come out if it was 1.5 million crimes for 1 million riders. The governor stands corrected. 1.5 crimes, 1.5 crimes for a million riders.

At the height of the pandemic, it went up exponentially. 2.8 crimes per million. Now that's when people are getting anxious. You read about; you saw it in the news. You may have experienced it personally. In 2021, things getting a little bit better, not great. 2.3 crimes per million riders, and that was roughly the same as what it was through 2022. So, when we judge ourselves, let's look at the pre-pandemic numbers. Again, before the pandemic,1.5 crimes per million riders. Today, year to date, it is 1.7 crimes per million riders. Now we're not exactly where we were, but that is an amazing trend. That is a trend that we can feel good about as long as that continues to hold.

We're also seeing some of those lowest strong start of the subway safety in history. We started collecting the data back in 1993. We're starting to share this information, so thus far, we're just wrapping up January now. But even the January data, we see, it's the lowest level of transit crime during a month of January since we started collecting data many, many decades ago. So, despite all these facts, I can't tell New Yorkers they should feel safe. I'm not going to even do that. But the data is showing that New Yorkers are telling us they feel safer, and that's what I'm going to pay attention to.

According to our December MTA customer satisfaction survey, and again, thank you Janno. And I spoke to the member of your team who conducts these surveys asking people how they feel and what their thoughts are and how we can improve is how we get better. So, let's talk about how they felt during this survey. Just basically the month of November. The number of New Yorkers who overall feel safe or very safe went up 18 percent in a very short time. We just started this initiative back in October. By November, people's attitudes were up almost 20 percent compared to the previous month. That's the highest jump we've seen since we started taking the surveys. And it builds on the fact that we have more riders. We reached another milestone on December 27 - one billion riders. 1 billion riders. And my train was crowded. And that's a Friday, right? All the stories, everybody's staying home on Fridays, they seem to be coming back. I had to stand, but that's okay.

So, we've had a robust year of ridership. Riders are coming back. We're making a difference, helping New Yorkers be safer and feel safer. And again, we're going to continue applying the lessons we learned. You heard about what I spoke about, about mental health. $1 billion investment, first time ever. The most aggressive approach the State of New York has taken to dealing with the issue of mental health since the deinstitutionalization of the 1970s. We are leaning hard on this, and again, I thank Commissioner Sullivan. We're going to have more services, more places for take people when they need a hospital bed because we have a shortage there. But when they leave there, don't just say, "Go back out to the streets. Good luck to you. God bless you." That doesn't work. It has to be staying in contact with people. "Are you able to get the therapy? Are you going to get services? Do you have a place to live? That's how we start making a real difference in this challenge." So, it's all about adding 3,200 new homes, new beds, 1000 beds, and that's going to be more beds than we had before.

So, Mayor, I'll let you take it away, but this is a good day. It's a good day. And I don't know that we'll ever stand here and say, "Crime is gone," but this is New York. It's vibrant. It feels much better than it did a year ago, even the month of October. There's this greater sense of security. Again, not my words, but the words of our valued riders. So, thank you very much for reporting this. And Mayor Adams, again, incredible partnership together. We're going to keep making a difference, not just for our riders, but for the people of New York, New York City.