After Another Subway Shooting, NYC Wrestles With Question of Safety

The subway crime that Jimmy Sumampow had been hearing about in recent years — as well as his own experience — had already led him to make plans to leave New York City. Then, on Friday, he saw a video online of the shooting on an A train this week.

“I’m scared,” said Mr. Sumampow, 46, after seeing the video. Mr. Sumampow lives in Elmhurst, Queens, but plans to board an Amtrak train on Monday for Florida, where he has a new job and an apartment lined up. “I feel I should move out for a while and see if New York takes action and gets better,” he said.

For Elise Anderson, however, the shooting did not raise her level of concern.

“I wouldn’t say I’m any more scared,” Ms. Anderson, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident, said as she waited at the Port Authority Bus Terminal subway station on Friday for a downtown A train. “I think we’re in one of the safest cities in the world.”

In interviews across the city this week, New Yorkers wrestled with a question that cut to the core of the city’s identity: Is the subway system safe? Subway crime data in recent years shows a muddled picture, and just as they have in surveys of riders and polls of residents, New Yorkers’ opinions diverge.

But barely more than a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul sent the National Guard and State Police into the subway to increase security and help ease New Yorkers’ fears, the shooting seemed to underscore the limits of law enforcement’s ability to improve safety underground.

The episode took place at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, where the Police Department maintains an outpost, Transit District 30, that is regularly staffed by officers. Moments before the shooting, two additional officers entered the station to inspect the platforms and train cars, Kaz Daughtry, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of operations, said at a news conference on Friday.

If protections like those, plus the 1,000 National Guard soldiers and other law enforcement personnel promised by Governor Hochul, are not enough to prevent one of the subway’s most gruesome confrontations in recent memory, what is?

“They could send the Army into the subway, I think it’s still going to get worse,” Antonio Balaguacha, 56, said Friday as he waited on a subway platform in Sunnyside, Queens, for a Manhattan-bound 7 train.

Efforts by city and state officials in recent days to improve safety have drawn a wide range of opinions from New Yorkers who rely on the subway. Some riders felt comforted by the presence of the Guard soldiers.

“I haven’t seen the National Guard yet, but I don’t think I would feel safer in their presence,” Patrick Bovie, 27, said on Friday as he waited for a G train in Brooklyn.

“I feel better seeing them here,” Anna Puello, a 47-year-old resident of Upper Manhattan, said on Friday.

Recent surveys by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority show that a significant percentage of riders, though not a majority, do not feel safe on the subway, with many citing erratic behavior by other passengers among their top concerns.

The data on subway crime paints a more nuanced picture. Annual figures from recent years show that major crime on the subway decreased slightly in 2023 compared with the year before, even as ridership rose.

While the total number of major crimes was similar in 2023 to the years before the pandemic, the system has still regained only about 70 percent of its average daily ridership, suggesting the per-ride crime rate is higher today than it once was. And some categories of crime that cause New Yorkers particular alarm, such as felony assault, have risen far above prepandemic levels.

In 2024, overall crime in the subway is up 13.2 percent through March 10, compared with the same period in 2023, but down 6.6 percent from the same period in 2022.

Officials have stressed that the chances of any rider becoming the victim of a crime are statistically remote: The 570 felony assaults recorded last year — the highest number in decades — came over the course of more than a billion rides.

But in a recent television interview, Ms. Hochul explained that data does little to assuage people’s fears. “I can show you all the statistics in the world and say, ‘You should feel safe because the numbers are better,’ but you’re the mom on the subway with your baby in a stroller,” the governor said, adding that it was the public’s perception of subway crime, not statistics, that informed her decision to deploy the National Guard.

Some riders, however, fear the surge in officers and troops will lead to more racial discrimination; some believe the discrimination has already started. Joy Richardson, a photo producer at HBO, stood beside a Penn Station subway entrance on Wednesday as police officers searched her bag.

“As soon as I heard about this, I knew I was going to be stopped,” said Ms. Richardson, 39, who lives in Brooklyn. “I knew because I have a big bag and I’m Black.”

Speaking at a news conference on Friday, Jeffrey Maddrey, the Police Department’s chief of department, said there was a need to enforce “quality of life” laws like fare evasion, which he noted could lead to more serious crimes. The man who started the fight that led to his own shooting on Thursday entered the subway without paying a fare, Mr. Maddrey added.

In February, Mayor Eric Adams ordered 1,000 additional police officers to patrol stations and trains. Ms. Hochul followed up last week by stationing 750 Guard troops at various stations, augmented by 250 personnel from the State Police and the M.T.A. A spokesman for Ms. Hochul did not respond to requests for comment.

“The presence of a uniform makes people feel better, and if the National Guards or the State Police want to add to that presence, I applaud that,” Mr. Adams said during a news conference on Tuesday.

A few demonstrators responded to the governor’s mobilization with a small protest on Friday night in Union Square. The demonstrators were outnumbered by police officers, journalists and curious passers-by, some of whom agreed with the organizers.

“I don’t think the police keep things safe,” said Tiffany Bailey, 21, a dog walker who lives in Brooklyn. “I think they just instill a sense of fear in us.”

Others said the protesters did not understand the fears of riding the subway. Jesenia Ramirez, a 44-year-old entrepreneur, prefers the hassle of buses, and the expense of taxis or rental cars, to the anxiety she feels when she takes the train. Part of her concern, she explained, is that because the subway system is so sprawling there is no way for police officers or Guard members to patrol it all.

“They cannot be in every train car or in every train,” said Ms. Ramirez, who lives in Manhattan.

As Mr. Sumampow rode the 7 train to Times Square on Friday morning, he said he had noticed the increased police presence at some stations, but it didn’t change his plans to leave the city. About a month ago, he said, three men tried to steal his wallet as he entered a subway station near his home. He escaped because he hit one of the robbers with his elbow, he said, and a nearby pedestrian yelled for the police.

Now Mr. Sumampow removes all the cash from his wallet every morning before he leaves home. And he has bought a one-way train ticket to Florida.

“I’m going to escape for a while,” he said. “But I’ll keep my apartment here. If New York gets safer, then I’ll come back.”

Julian Roberts-Grmela and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.