3 murders on NYC subways this year come amid costly NYPD surge, vast surveillance

The murder of a commuter aboard a D train in the Bronx on Friday morning marked 2024's third killing on the New York City subway, despite a surge of NYPD officers in public transit and extensive systemwide surveillance.

During a press conference near the 182nd-183rd Streets station where a 45-year-old man was killed on Friday, NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper insisted the additional police presence is “paying dividends” — but also acknowledged a 45% increase in overall crime in January compared to the same month last year.

An increase in grand larcenies aboard the trains is largely behind the spike, but the three murders on the subway this year mean the city is on track to surpass 2023’s total of five murders.

“Look, our cops are out there, they're visible," Kemper said. "Our riders, I know they see them. [Officers are] riding trains, they're on platforms, they're engaging with acts of lawlessness every single day."

MTA Chair Janno Lieber said overall crime was down this month compared to February of last year, though there’s still a week left. He noted there are more than 1,000 surveillance cameras on the trains and cameras in all 472 stations.

Those devices captured images of the suspects in Friday’s killing in Fordham Heights, officials said.

“We're not going to tell New Yorkers don't be concerned when there's a shooting, but overall crime that the trajectory is crime is down versus last year in the month of February,” Lieber said. “And with the NYPD's surge of personnel we're hopeful that's going to stay there.”

That surge comes at a cost to taxpayers. Gothamist previously reported the NYPD spent $155 million on overtime for subway security in 2022, when there was a 2% drop in overall crime in major crimes on the trains.

Police said they expected to quickly make arrests for the murder at the 182nd-183rd Streets station. But the NYPD declined to take questions about the status of investigations into the two other murders in the subway system this year.

Police arrested a 16-year-old for murder last week in the killing at the Mount Eden Avenue station on Feb. 12. The NYPD confirmed police are still searching for a 15-year-old suspect in that incident.

Police are also still searching for the man suspected of shooting and killing crossing guard Richie Henderson, 45, who was trying to break up a fight over loud music aboard a 3 train in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on Jan. 14.

Henderson’s wife, Jakeba Dockery, said an apparent lack of progress in the case has compounded the pain of her husband’s murder.

“I'm kind of upset with [Eric] Adams, this mayor dude, because I felt like he kind of failed my husband and failed everybody who died on the MTA,” she told Gothamist in an interview. “He made it clear he was going to have cops in every station, cameras, et cetera. But I feel like there was nobody there to assist my husband.”

The NYPD has released images of the suspect in that shooting.

“ZIP code plays a part in solving crimes and the ZIP code my husband got killed in is not the best ZIP code for solving crimes,” Dockery said.

Police share new details about the killing at the 182nd-183rd Streets station that was caught on surveillance cameras — though they were still trying to determine whether the victim had been shot or stabbed to death.

The scene in the aftermath of a fatal shooting at the Mount Eden station in the Bronx.

The incident appeared to be a random act of violence targeting a stranger.

Police said three suspects — two men and a woman — were captured on video boarding a southbound D train. One of the men sat down next to a 45-year-old man and “words were exchanged,” Kemper said. A three-on-one fight soon erupted.

The 45-year-old victim was pronounced dead at 5:50 a.m., according to officials.

“I’m confident arrests will be made in the near future,” said Kemper.

But some Bronx residents feel that security is an afterthought.

Michelle Santini had just started work at a beauty school on Grand Concourse on Friday morning. She said she hadn't heard about the shooting.

“Nobody is afraid of the law anymore,” said Santini, 45, adding she didn’t see police patrolling on the neighborhood's streets or inside the subway stations. “This is normal for us. … Politicians don’t care.”

The MTA is meanwhile pursuing measures it says will make the system safer. This week the agency said it will be installing bright LED lights in all subway fixtures by 2026 to create a better sense of safety and capture clearer surveillance images.

MTA board member Andrew Albert said he plans to press officials next week about plans to deter fare evasion and whether more police are needed in the system.

“I will be asking about the additional deployment of police,” Albert said, noting there’s a “large degree of certainty that … people committing these crimes did not pay their fare.”

But Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute who’s known for her tough-on-crime columns in the New York Post, said the annual average number of subway murders was one or two from 1997 to 2019. The three homicides in the first seven weeks of 2024 showed a grave problem, she said.

“Despite the rhetoric from the MTA, the governor and the mayor that the subways are safe, the subways are far more dangerous than they were before 2020,” she wrote in an email. “A big part of this is that we're not keeping enough dangerous people off the system before they commit a violent crime. We can do that through a mixture of the criminal justice system and the mental-health system, but we can't not do it.”

Brittany Kriegstein contributed reporting.