A weekend of violence on NYC's subways stokes fears about public safety

There have been twice as many homicides in New York’s transit system so far this year as during the same time period in 2023 – even though overall violence in the system is slightly down, according to police data.

The figures have come into focus in the wake of a particularly grisly killing over the weekend — when authorities said a man set a sleeping woman on fire on an F train at Brooklyn’s Coney Island station, burning her to death. Police charged 33-year-old Sebastian Zapeta with murder and arson in that attack.

Immigration officials said Zapeta is an immigrant from Guatemala in the United States without authorization, having re-entered the country after being deported in 2018. But that incident was one of several violent acts on the subway over the weekend — including a stabbing death, a shooting and two punching attacks on elderly riders.

Including the latest homicides, 11 people have been killed in the city’s mass transit system so far this year, compared to five within the same period last year, according to police data. For some of the 4 million people who ride the subway every day, the weekend’s incidents have aggravated a persistent public anxiety.

“There's no way you can really feel safe. There's no way,” commuter Dashauna Jackson said after getting off the C train at Spring Street on Monday. “It really has gotten really bad over the last few years.”

Jackson and other subway riders who spoke to Gothamist said they’ve noticed an uptick in people acting erratically, fights and general disruption on the subways within the past few years.

Their comments come amid a continuing debate about public safety on the transit system, which crescendoed earlier this month when Daniel Penny, who was accused of causing the death of Jordan Neely when he held him in a chokehold on an uptown F train last year, was acquitted of manslaughter charges. Passengers on the train had said Neely was yelling threats when Penny grabbed him.

Paul Reeping, head of research at the nonprofit Vital City, said a broad uptick in incidents is not just a perception.

”If people are noticing that, it's because partially it is true,” he said, adding that an increase in subway crime during the pandemic mirrored the increase in crime elsewhere in the city and has yet to get back down to pre-pandemic levels.

Though homicides doubled in transit this year, they’re still exceedingly rare, he stressed. He said two murders occurring in the subway system on the same day is “huge” because it’s so uncommon.

“We think that the subways are maybe even safer than walking on the streets, just in terms of the amount of time spent and the amount of crime that happens,” he said.

Still, he said, the increase should be taken seriously.

“I think the way that most people feel about the subway, just because it feels like an intimate space, is that it must be like a plane – there shouldn't be any murders there,” he said. “The number should be zero.”

Politicians have taken note of the public concern. Gov. Kathy Hochul last week said she was deploying an additional 250 National Guard troops into the subway system, in addition to 750 troops the state sent into the subways in March after a string of high-profile subway crimes. On Sunday, she touted the installation of cameras in every subway car, a $5.5 million project.

Surveillance in the subway system – along with body camera footage and a viral bystander video – helped police swiftly take a person of interest into custody in the case of the burning woman. But that surveillance didn’t as quickly lead to arrests in four other incidents, including the other killing, that happened in subways across the city over the weekend.

On Friday morning, just after 6 a.m., an 83-year-old man riding a southbound 5 train near Manhattan’s Fulton Street station was punched in the face several times by a stranger after a verbal dispute, police said. He sustained lacerations to the face and head and was taken to Kings County Hospital Center for treatment.

Around 3 p.m. Saturday, a 21-year-old man and an 18-year-old man were shot by two unidentified individuals as they got off a southbound Q train at the Avenue U subway station in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, officials said. They were both taken to local hospitals in stable condition.

On Sunday at 12:30 a.m., a 37-year-old man was stabbed to death on a southbound 7 train at the 61st Street-Woodside Station in Queens. A 26-year-old man was also slashed multiple times and taken to Elmhurst Hospital in stable condition.

And on Sunday around 2:30 p.m., a 76-year-old woman was punched in the head by a stranger and knocked to the ground on the southbound 6 train platform at Manhattan’s 51st Street subway station, police said. She was taken to NY Presbyterian Hospital in stable condition.

In each of those cases except for the fatal stabbing, police sent out clear photos of the alleged assailants – just as they did in the case of the woman burned on the F train.

According to the NYPD’s CompStat database, crime in the transit system overall is down by 135 incidents, or 6%, in comparison to this time last year – with 2,095 incidents reported through Dec. 15 this year.

Grand larceny makes up a majority of those reported crimes, with more than 1,000 incidents both years. But felony assaults – the kinds of attacks that can leave victims with permanent injuries – are the next highest category. The police data shows 548 felony assaults have been reported in transit this year, compared to 557 in the same time frame last year.

Danny Pearlstein, policy director for the Riders Alliance, an organization that helps commuters advocate for better transit systems, said the answer to the problem is not necessarily more “scare tactics” that can further heighten anxieties for riders.

“We need our leaders to double down on housing solutions to housing problems, on health care solutions to health care problems,” he said. “To the extent we want to see a police presence on the subway, we need that to be on platforms and trains, even though we know that police can’t solve every problem in transit.”

John McCarthy, chief of policy and external relations at the MTA, said the transit agency has been employing the three-pronged “Cops, Cameras and Care” approach to bring down subway crime and make riders feel safer.

He said the agency has been working with the State and the NYPD to put more uniformed officers in the system, has met its goal of installing cameras in every subway car, and has established the SCOUT program, where outreach teams work together to get help for people who are homeless and struggling with mental illness.

McCarthy said the MTA has been looking into the context behind each homicide to see what circumstances caused the deaths and what could have possibly prevented them.

“There’s still work to be done,” he said. “We remain focused on driving that number down.”