Tarmu, farther down the A line in Crown Heights. “You definitely see more mental illness on the train,” said Ms. “My friends and neighbors don’t come out at night here anymore.” In May, the mayor’s office said 1,300 people had been placed in shelters through the program, but it was unclear how many remained there.īernadette Gay, who has lived in the Financial District her entire life, was recently harassed on a train by a man who appeared disturbed, she said, and she has stopped riding the system after dark. The plan, criticized widely by advocates for the homeless, has thus far done little to quell public concern. Kathy Hochul announced plans this year to stop the homeless from sheltering inside the subway system, flooding trains with police officers and mental health workers to intervene. Most said they felt sympathy for those who sheltered on the trains, and several said they were familiar with statistics that show that the vast majority of sufferers are nonviolent, and are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.
Many New Yorkers who spoke with The Times expressed conflicted feelings about homelessness and mental illness in the subways. “I can see more,” said Rocio Izurieta, who works in Columbus Circle but has lived in Coney Island for 30 years. The increased numbers of homeless and mentally ill people on less populous trains are difficult to ignore, and officials fear they are dissuading commuters who are the financial lifeblood of the system. But a rash of high-profile attacks in which homeless and mentally ill suspects have been charged has changed how many subway riders view what was once a common, if uncomfortable, interruption. Such an experience was once just an informal toll for people moving through New York. He chatted about taking public transit - he planned to, and was not worried - when an older man approached him and asked for cash, then moved on when Gibbs said he didn’t have any. “I’ve never had problems in New York,” he said. Outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal, John Gibbs had just rolled in from his home in Vermont, and planned to see a concert in Queens. Still, the recent increases in violent crime have rattled residents and commuters accustomed to the safety of a more modern era. During the pandemic though, such impressions were correct, with comparative caveats: crime did increase during the first year of the pandemic, but the uptick still fell far short of the rates of the 1990s, when the city saw more than 2,000 murders a year. Across years of surveys about crime in the United States, Americans consistently believe crime in a given year is worse than the previous, despite long-range statistics showing that violent crime has been on the decline, nationally, for decades. “All of those little things increase your feeling that things are not the way they used to be.”Īmericans have historically struggled to square their beliefs about safety with statistical realities. “There definitely is less civility, and I think that that’s contributing to everything,” said Carla McKesson, 70, who has lived in Inwood since the late 1970s. Still, smaller quality-of-life infractions disquiet residents.
It is a neighborhood that illustrates the trends of the past three years: Murders and shootings surged with the pandemic, but have receded sharply in the past year. The A train’s northern terminus is in Inwood, the edge of Manhattan. In Upper Manhattan, Disorder and Empty Trains The number of crimes taking place within the transit system is roughly the same as in 2019, according to police statistics, even though the subway is seeing only around 60 percent of its 2019 ridership. While shootings and murders in New York have begun to abate after a pandemic surge, other crimes have increased since last year. New York has been grappling with fears about crime, and danger has become a reliable talking point for Mayor Eric Adams, who has for months warned that the city is on the brink. In the throes of the virus’s darkest days, it emptied out in the sublime, post-vaccine honeymoon of 2021, it filled up now, as the city wobbles toward pandemic-era stability, it contains a crisis of confidence. It is a $2.75 equalizer, moving the young, the old, the rich and the poor, tourists and commuters. At 31 miles long, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s A train traverses New York City, from the thriving Dominican enclave of Washington Heights to the Financial District, from rugged East New York to beachy Far Rockaway.
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