Unprovoked attacks in subway are front and center in NYC mayor’s race

A rise in unprovoked attacks on subway riders since the COVID-19 pandemic has made concerns over public safety on mass transit a central — if not unavoidable — issue in New York City's mayoral race.

Candidates in the race are by and large drawing a direct line to subway crime with the city’s stubbornly high homeless population who seek shelter in trains and stations. But the City Hall hopefuls vary on how to manage the crisis, with some calling to flood the system with police and others promising a historically large deployment of mental health professionals.

Subway safety is proving to be a key concern for New Yorkers this year. An Emerson College poll in March estimated 48% of registered city voters thought the subways were becoming less safe, compared to 32% who thought they were becoming safer. The topic has also drawn the attention of U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who on Friday took a brief subway ride with Mayor Eric Adams after threatening to withhold federal funding from the MTA unless officials submit a plan to address transit crime (the agency complied).

The NYPD reported 10 murders in the subway system in 2024, tying a record set in 2022 for the most in a calendar year since the department took control of transit policing in the mid-1990s. The subways saw 579 felony assaults last year, which also set a record. The city has over the last five years seen a string of straphangers randomly shoved onto subway tracks by people suffering with a mental illness. In January, a 23-year-old woman survived being pushed off a platform and in front of an A train in Washington Heights by a man who was later deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.

“Most of the people feel less safe,” said Harlem resident Ben James, 38, after getting off a train at Union Square last week. “There are more homeless people who are on them 24 hours, seven days a week … It’s a mental health issue.”

The mental health crisis is also apparent in NYPD crime data. While felony assaults are at historic levels in the subways last year, robberies fell to an eight-year low. Fritz Umbach, a criminologist at John Jay College, said that indicates riders are more likely to be subject to random attacks of “emotional violence” than “instrumental violence,” where they’re attacked for their property.

Nearly every candidate in the mayor’s race has proposed a solution.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has led every mayoral poll since announcing his candidacy last month, has proposed hiring 1,500 additional cops to the NYPD transit bureau, which would boost its staffing levels by roughly 50%. His campaign claims the move would pay for itself by reducing overtime pay for subway patrols.

State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has ranked second place to Cuomo in recent mayoral polls, has argued there are already enough police in the subways. He said the city needs other solutions to address transit crime and homelessness, and proposed the creation of a new city “Department of Community Safety.” He said the agency would cost $1.1 billion a year to run, and would be charged with deploying more mental health outreach and violence interrupter teams into the transit system.

Adams — who last week announced plans to forgo the Democratic primary in June and run as an independent in November’s general election — has credited his administration for a 22% drop in major crime on the subway during the first three months of 2025. City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak said the drop is “in spite of countless issues within our current criminal justice system, which has produced a revolving door of repeat offenders.”

Several candidates, including City Comptroller Brad Lander, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie as well as Cuomo, have supported the expansion of involuntary hospitalizations of mentally ill homeless people in the subways. The topic is also up for debate in Albany, where state lawmakers are mulling legislation that would expand limits on how long a person can be treated in medical facilities against their will.

“Case law now allows for removing people and taking them to the hospital,” said Kathy Wylde, the influential president of the nonprofit Partnership for New York City, which has lobbied for more involuntary removals of mentally ill homeless people from public spaces. “But the law does not explicitly provide for keeping people in hospital or in mandatory outpatient treatment beyond the point of crisis … The law currently says you have to let them go.”

The focus on crime ahead of June’s mayoral primary echoes similar concerns during the 2021 race, when Mayor Eric Adams was elected on a platform that centered around public safety. Back then, city officials were still trying to coax riders back onto the subways after the pandemic all but shut down life across the five boroughs.

Just two weeks into Adams’ first term, concerns over subway crime and homelessness reached new heights when Michelle Go, 40, was fatally shoved in front of a train at Times Square. The man charged with her murder was later deemed unfit to stand trial.

Adams’ first three years in office were highlighted with initiatives launched alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul that aimed to make the subways safer for riders. The pair argued a safer transit would help the city’s post-pandemic recovery. Adams and Hochul have since 2022 launched new initiatives to deploy special units of mental health workers and police officers to remove homeless people from subway stations. Adams has also directed hundreds more NYPD officers into the system, and Hochul last year deployed National Guard soldiers into stations.

But while ridership has rebounded from about 2.2 million per weekday in early 2022 to roughly 4 million today, the rate of violent crime in the subway system has remained higher than pre-pandemic levels.

That’s opened a lane for candidates to campaign on subway crime, said Basil Smikle, a Columbia University professor and former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party.

“You're managing a couple of issues here: You're managing people's anxiety, you're managing the crime themselves, and you're trying to figure out if there is a common thread that if you focus resources on dealing with that, you might alleviate the problem as a whole,” said Smikle. “It’s always perception. Crime could be down, but if you don’t feel safe, it’s not down nearly enough.”

MTA Chair Janno Lieber hammered home the relevance of subway crime and homelessness in the mayor’s race during a forum at the 92nd Street Y last week, hinting he also supports the involuntary removals and hospitalizations of destitute people in the system.

“Some of it is the presence of folks who are struggling with mental illness, who are unpredictable and who do bad stuff unpredictably … We have to get those people into a better situation,” Lieber said. “The subway is no place for somebody with serious mental illness to be unmedicated, not being looked after.”