Subway crime plummets as ridership jumps significantly in congestion pricing era | Hacker News Reader

Subway crime plummets as ridership jumps significantly in congestion pricing era

amny.com

156 pointsceejayoz207 comments

147 reported crimes in a month in NYC's very busy subway. That's it.

Don't let social media fool you. The US is not becoming a crime ridden cesspool, the only stinking I smell is from scaremongers that profit from your fear.

How many were reported in January 2019?

I can only find back to 2020 when there were 136.

https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr006/new-york-city-crime...

Those are the number of rapes reported in the city, not the number of subway crimes.

Arg, you are right. I tried a bit more, the numbers seem available on compstat but difficult to get.

And only one of them was a person being burnt to death

Safer than driving, you say?

I'm pretty sure one of the properties of cars is that they can catch on fire (due to all that gasoline, which is famously flammable), so I don't think you should start driving if you want to avoid burning to death

Cars are mostly dangerous to other people, less so to the people inside of them. Especially at inner-city speeds.

(Well, at least when you like at direct injury. People inside the cars might have long running health effects from insufficient exercise.)

Even as a car occupant, you’re still significantly likelier to die in a crash than you are riding the subway. In NYC — but also basically anywhere else, at any time of day.

Chance of being in a car accident on the train is zero.

Chance of being the victim of a crime is low but not zero.

This person enjoys discussing ML, according to their post history.

Either they are stupid, actually talking out their butt and should be no where near a mathematical discussion or they are purposely using their ethical statistics class to be disingenuous and their "conclusions" should be thrown out.

Being on a subway, regardless of the parent poster's sarcastic point about "only" one person being burned to death, is far safer than driving.

This very simple conclusion does not require an "ethical" statistics class, and you are being disingenuous and rude in your post. Have you considered reading HN's posting guidelines?

In NYC there are 250 traffic fatalities per year with 1 million daily drivers

There are 10 murders in the subway per year with 2 million daily riders

The cars are WAY more dangerous and it’s not even funny. Plus cars cause 50,000 injuries per year. The amount of money we waste on cars is insane.

Yes, i know that the subway is way safer than driving. The post i was responding to, however, does not.

And only one of them was a person being sparta-kicked onto the tracks

And only one of them was a young woman having her face randomly shoved into the side of an arriving train rendering her a quadriplegic.

And just a week ago 70 people died in a fireball that ended up with their bodies at the bottom of the Potomac.

Terrible things happen, statistically they aren't likely to happen to you. With crime, it's less likely to happen in a crowd.

A scenario that has never occurred a) outside the subway or b) outside NYC, yes?

This is true unfortunately.

https://apnews.com/article/new-york-subway-woman-fire-c946bb...

If there is a “bright” side it’s that they caught the guy almost immediately because of cameras. It will take some time, but my hope is that eventually criminals will understand that cameras now make escaping from a crime impossible.

Solve rate goes up -> crime rate goes down -> solve rate goes up even more.

I'm not sure someone intent on burning a person to death in public is going to be very deterred by the knowledge that cameras are recording their acts.

In fact they may encourage him.

I don't have stats, but I strongly suspect the set of NYC people aiming to burn others to death in public (and ruin their own lives in the process) is quite small. The presence of cameras is almost certainly a net positive for reducing crime

Yes, and the presence of cameras would presumably mean that if the parent commenter's prediction comes true, the crime rate would go down even more as crimes of opportunity vanish and crimes from people who are disturbed enough to do things like that are still quite rare.

> eventually criminals will understand that cameras now make escaping from a crime impossible.

In NYC most of the time the cameras are such low resolution that when they post a photo of someone wanted for a crime it's impossible to make them out at all.

This happens in cars very often.

Surely you apply the same rigorous analysis to driving as you did to this, correct?

Talk about a false equivalence

People die horribly - including the specific example of "being burnt to death" - in both methods of getting places, in fairly low numbers per million passenger miles.

So we shouldn’t be concerned about random subway murders cause of car accidents? What?

We should weigh the usefulness and the relative frequencies of dying, not singular anecdotes.

It’s not as if there has never been a murder in a car.

If you’re gonna spend your time solving a problem, are you gonna try to solve:

1) the 10 murders a year using a mode of transportation that sees 2 million daily users

2) the 250 murders a year using a mode of transportation that sees 1 million daily users

???

Cars are dangerous and they cause crime.

Whereas I agree with the general thrust of your point, I am not sure cars cause crime. Perhaps their drivers do; perhaps the cars are accessories. But the cars are not causing the crime.

If the mode of travel inherently results in a high rate of death and injury, then what’s the difference?

We call it a crime if someone does it to another person, but it’s just an accident if cars keep doing it over and over again?

The justice system does not work on cars, no matter how guilty you allege they are. People, on the other hand...

There's almost certainly a case like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U... ("United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency") and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Article_Consi... ("United States v. Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls") for a car.

edit: Ah, here we go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_1958_Plymouth_Sedan_v._Pen...

Or even cats in cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Fifteen_Impoun...

More seriously, though, I'd very much like to see civil liability for the car manufacturers for deliberately making cars bigger and more dangerous for pedestrians over the last few decades. (https://www.npr.org/2024/12/10/nx-s1-5222277/taller-vehicles...)

> It's the latest study to find that taller vehicles are more dangerous for pedestrians. The majority of vehicles sold in the U.S. are now SUVs and light trucks, which can have front ends that are often 40 inches or taller. Safety advocates say that's one reason why pedestrian fatalities are up more than 75% since reaching their lowest point in 2009.

The justice system is entirely our own creation and we have arbitrarily decided who and what is to blame when driving causes the significant amount of violence that it causes every day. If we didn’t place the blame on the XYZ for XYZ reasons, or if we didn’t have no-fault accidents, then driving would be functionally and practically illegal. So we make up methods of keeping it legal to the level that we’ve deemed necessary or desirable. Does it matter whether a person chops up another person vs a car decapitates another person? Functionally no. The person is still dead, their family is still grieving, and their contributions to their community are still gone. But we’ve decided that one of those is a crime while the other is an “accident.” Coincidentally, a group of highly influential and rich car manufacturers have also lobbied trillions of dollars to “encourage” that decision.

I agree that "accident" is an unfortunate term. However, these cars are not self driving. The person is at fault.

People are murdered by road rage-ing drivers relatively frequently. They rarely make national news though.

https://everytownresearch.org/road-rage-shootings-remain-ala...

(the link only counts shootings; there are surely more intentional homicides-by- and homicides-while driving)

It was murder, wasn’t it?

Murders happen on and off the subway. Some in cars! Some using cars! Most are horrible. Plenty include fire.

More people take the subway each day than total residents of some entire states. No one says “avoid Wyoming” over one murder, but it only has 500k people. The subway has millions.

I can think of way better reasons to avoid Wyoming.

But...but..but... J hole!

There's plenty of people that die because of cost cutting/saving a buck with vehicles/roads. Just those intentional... sorry, I mean, acceptable deaths are just fine with society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murders_by_motor_vehi...

That seems to have been going around for, oh, the past 47 minutes or so.

Are you sure it wasn't a strawman?

Hm I wonder if that had anything to do with the subway itself?

Is it possible that a crazy person could burn someone alive in any location?

Generally the NYC subway puts you into closer contact with crazy people than you would get normally. It’s like the bus here in Seattle and Link train, a lot of people don’t ride them because they don’t feel safe with all crazy people riding them…only a few people get killed by these people a year but it still discourages ridership. (Note that neither Seattle nor NYC are known for homicide, so murders like these are really notable)

And yet the subway is safer in NYC than any other mode of travel. So it turns out that everyone's fear of each other is not only stupid, but actively harmful

and, almost more importantly, NYC could not exist as it does without public transit. It would simply not function. The alternative to NYC having mass transit is not "everyone gets to drive to Manhattan in their cars."

Yes, but still a bit less crazies murdering people will always be nice and appreciated. Mobile homeless sheltering isn’t sustainable if you want other people to use transit.

We don't just have a bit less crazies when you compare with the 70s, 80s, or even the 90s. We flattened crime.

Oh for sure! But it only takes a 2 or 3 homicides/year on public transit to dissuade riders.

we have more crazies than singapore MRT, so that shows that crime could be lower with more aggressive enforcement

This is a common form of Gaslighting. The issue is clearly less about the rate than it is the agency. However true, when e.g. driving we feel a degree of agency, i.e. "If I drive defensively and pay attention my chances of an accident are small". Being in an enclosed space with somebody more physically powerful than you leaves you with very little (if any) ability to do anything about the situations that arise.

Sure but that sense of agency can also give you a false sense of security. It’s impossible to drive perfectly when you are for example tired, and it’s impossible to not be tired sometimes, if driving is your main form of transportation and you’re driving back from parties and events and your day job. You can also be defensive on the subway by avoiding cars with crazy people.

The issue is not about the agency. It's absolutely about the rate. More death = more problems for our entire society. I mean, you say "it's not about the rate," but how about you tell that to my friend who's husband was killed by a bad driver while he was just minding his business riding his bike? How about you tell that to their two kids?

We've defended ourselves with our own two hands for millennia and done just fine. Meanwhile how the hell are you gonna defend yourself when someone veers into your lane at the last second and insta-ganks you with a head on crash?

I'm sorry your friend went through that. I've gone through that as well (a sibling). However distraught we are it doesn't change our perceptions, actual and not, about driving and our agency in it. And it ignores that for most of us, driving is also more pleasant and more convenient. In Austin I took the train to work daily for three years. It was awesome. But it was slower and more expensive than driving, despite the train stops being a 5 minute walk from my home and office. It would be even less convenient for others. Also I had to go back home once because I sat in someone's pee. It was busy enough that I never felt unsafe, but when I take the train in Portland, I have at times been one of the only non homeless people on it. These experiences matter. The (perceived) safety is just another factor on top.

This could happen anywhere. In this case, the train was stationary with its doors open. It was at a terminal and hadn’t started its route yet; the trains sit like that for a while before departing.

Also this terminal station is above-ground and partially open-air, and is located a block from the beach. It’s not like the “trapped deep underground” situation most people seem to be envisioning here.

A crazy person could do the exact same thing in a park or basically any random bench. Not subway specific at all.

There's people burned to death all over the US. Most of them were murdered by negligent road engineers.

> And only one of them was a person being burnt to death

Flying is getting safer and safer… only one recent crash at Ronald Regain airport (KDCA).

If it’s anything like SF most crime goes unreported.

Not to mention the knock on effect. A single criminal incident can result in thousands of people choosing not to use public transport.

But you are right, the crime aspect is overblown in places like NYC.

The last three times I called the police they made it clear they were only going to take a report so I could give it to insurance. One time the burglar was still inside (we let the police know this) and we watched the cop checked the door (locked) and left. We then watched the burglar walk into the room with the DVR and our cameras went out. The next day the dvr was gone so we couldn't even hold the cops accountable.

Another time we put up wanted posters, a couple of people ID'd him (they told us where he was squatting but didn't know his name) after a week of calls the cops finally go to check it out but by that point he'd left.

Anyway that's a long way of saying unless a third party needs a police report I don't bother wasting my time reporting anything.

"We then watched the burglar walk into the room with the DVR and our cameras went out"

I must congratulate you on not using a cloud service for registering your surveillance videos. On the DVR note, mine is on the ceiling above a TV. Cables come down a short height to the TV.

"One time the burglar was still inside (we let the police know this) and we watched the cop checked the door (locked) and left"

Didn't the police take your key to unlock the door?

> I must congratulate you on not using a cloud service for registering your surveillance videos. On the DVR note, mine is on the ceiling above a TV. Cables come down a short height to the TV.

This predated anything like that. I had to build the system myself, complete with analog cameras and a capture card (or two?) rated in frames per second. After that we put the DVR in the ceiling too.

For a later break in they cut the power and internet cables. Had backup power but didn't think about internet. Got a cell backup after that, but it was never needed. Shortly after that this jerk hit some guys store for the third time and the owner had been sleeping inside with a pistol. Didn't shoot him but pistol whipped him and roughed him up until the cops showed up. No more break-ins in our neighborhood and the urgent care doctors a few doors down didn't have the copper stolen from their air conditioner ever again.

> Didn't the police take your key to unlock the door?

No, we weren't there to help. We called 911 back to tell them the burglar was still inside but the cop had determined 'there was no signs of forced entry' so he left. We were a bt over an hour away with family at the time and wanted them to stay while we drove over but he had already made his determination that there was nothing more he could do, I guess.

Yup, it's unpopular to say, but American style policing works through vigilance, responsiveness, and deterrence. When academics and pundits argue that the 'Nordic model' or other European style of policing and criminal justice system is better, they ignore demographic differences , unreported crime, and a those countries having a higher tolerance for crime. The way you lower crime is to have less tolerance for it ,and prosecute it when it happens. This is not to say it's perfect, but the counterfactual is much worse.

America is more acceptance of crime and accepts more excuses and is celebrated in media/tv/movies. America over reacts to crime where law enforcement become people committing a new crime and people end up in jail for life. But this standard isn't applied equally with those closer to power/money having free rein and others powerless/poorer getting examples made of them.

It wasn’t even cops that caught people and you think increased presence prevented crime? How them boots taste?

Half the time they’re not looking at anyone but chatting in a circle. And the NG at the stations are even more useless (I say this as a former NG member) for this

And time and time again it’s been shown the way to prevent crime is social services eliminating the drivers of crime, not the punitive reactive scenario you’re describing

> down from 231 last year

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Oh wait, are you referring to the news media? Noted I guess. I’ve seen scaremongering on both sides, especially when dealing with change.

Anyway, for context, because the first thing I wondered that the linked article completely delivered on was, out of how many passengers?

TY: 3,834,806 vs. LY: 3,303,727 and that’s a single days ridership in the city. That’s more than the population of many states. While it’s good news that the number of crimes decreased from 231 to 147, isn’t it also impressive that the number is so low considering the amount of people that take the subway? I’m frankly impressed with the safety of the New York subway system. Brilliant work by everyone involved. I had no idea it was that good, not being exposed to that volume, I simply didn’t have a frame of reference. Just wow.

It’s genuinely incredible how safe the nyc subways are. The only thing more incredible is the insane propaganda effort that’s been pushed for half a century to slander the subways and the city itself.

Haven’t they put cops on the subway passenger cars of late?

AFAIK they're mostly watching the turnstiles.

The article says that every train between 9pm and 5am has a uniformed police officer on board.

I look at those subway crime videos, someone gets into a fight and a bystander pulls a weapon joining the attack and everyone scrambles out the car. Someone’s lit on fire and everyone scrambles.

Crime and victim count: 2

When they start counting the mental health toll as victims too, NYC’s subway stats will be cooked. The numbers will rise by 50x and match what everyone already perceives

I've lived in NYC for 30 years and ridden the subway thousands of times going back to the last peak in crime in the 90s. I've never witnessed a real crime or seen someone brandish a weapon. I know a few people who have been near or been victimized to a small degree. None had anything like PTSD.

I know several people who have died or suffered serious injuries in car crashes.

I lived in NYC < 7 years and saw all kinds of crimes. Fistfights, public urination, I’ve been threatened with a box cutter, multiple female friends groped.

a NYer espousing normalized invalidation of everyone else in the blast radius, as reflected in NYC’s safety statistics

check, check and check

Do you live in NYC? I do, and I think what the person you’re responding to is pointing out is that watching social media videos of crimes in NYC gives you a wildly distorted perspective on what it feels like to live here. Yes, crime is a problem, just like in every single city in the world. But basically no one that I know has been victimized or even been a witness to the kinds of crimes you’re talking about. It’s a huge city, and these incidents are statistically rare.

That said, we are all traumatized and have PTSD, but it’s over the ridiculous cost of living :)

Everyone commenting doesn't live here. I'm well aware the crime happens in the city. What I think people don't quite appreciate is that the city is huge. The city hosts not only millions of residents but millions more visitors. The subway services literally billions of rides per year. Even if the raw numbers are high, it's not a war zone. If you stay aware and avoid dangerous situations and look both ways crossing the street and don't join a gang, the chances of being a victim are slim.

I’ve lived in NYC, and I’ve lived in other places that gave me a much different view on how to validate people’s experiences. I view all of my NYC friends and unenlightened philisters in this respect and you are acting just like them.

You are aiming to spark introspection by talking about the nice day to day experience, at the expense of the not nice experiences based on a difference in perceived frequency. But this is all for pride.

I cannot comprehend what point you're trying to make or how you derived it from me describing my own lived experience. I have lived elsewhere, even outside the US. I know nyc isn't the only way to live and I'm not telling anyone it's the best. Just that it's not as dangerous as portrayed in some media and it's possible to live a fulfilling life and even raise kids.

while the NYC subway is indeed quite safe, it's also undeniably true that there are a lot of stinking smells.

The elevators smell less like urine than they used to. I consider that a major improvement.

I see a massive increase in some kinds of crime every day, in newspapers and here on HN. And nobody seems to be able to do anything about it.

That's about 1 out of every 4 stations getting hit once a month with something. Millions of people take the subway almost daily. Sounds like the chances of being close enough to witness a crime, even if not directly victimized, are pretty high.

Then you have situations like the Jordan Neely episode which, though perhaps not "reported crimes", terrorize an entire car full of people.

So entering the subway gives you a 1 in 4 chance of being at a station that had one crime reported that month. I’m shaking in my boots here!

I’d guess this is astronomically lower than the chances of witnessing 100 car drivers violating the law on your way to work.

In reality the number is far higher than that, it just doesn’t get reported. On any given ride you have a pretty high likelihood of have “an incident” with a deranged member of the public, and your odds skyrocket if you’re a woman. Multiple women I know get a random weirdo trying to corner them in the subway or follow them at least once a week. None of this gets reported.

For the people who don’t live in NYC: “incident with a deranged member of the public” is usually code for “sharing space with a homeless person minding their own business”.

That is (sadly) not infrequent. Incidents in which you’re actually in danger are vanishingly rare.

Since you’re claiming the data is false and pointing to vague anecdotes: I’ve lived in NYC for more than a decade, and this is total bullshit. Yes, what you’re saying does happen, but very rarely in my experience.

Well I’ve got you beat by over a decade. It happens, and it happens all the time.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you actually live in Brooklyn, in or near Williamsburg, and not in the city.

I live on the UWS, but it's pretty lame to say people who live in Brooklyn don't live in the city.

You’re really trying to have it both ways here.

Only Manhattan counts as the city. Brooklyn is Long Island. The outer boroughs were added for political reasons centuries after the city was established.

UWS is one of, if not the most tranquil places in the city, but take a train in any direction from Union Station or any other major hub and it’s pure bedlam.

Come on man, this is just straight up not true. I’ve hung out downtown for basically my entire life, lived and/or commuted around and through Union Square for ten plus years and it’s nothing like you’re describing.

Not really interested in arguing about this literally more than 127 years after it was decided. All five boroughs are NYC.

And I leave the UWS almost every single day, and it's nowhere near as bad as you're describing. Maybe it changed since you left who knows how long ago. Or you never lived here at all. Don't really care at this point, just wanted to add my voice to the convo. It's clear we disagree, and I wish you the best!

There have to be at least 147 gate jumpers every morning. There's probably a delta between crime and reported crime that is pretty large.

you gonna count speeding too

Yeah why does crime only count when it's poor person coded.

Not sure how speeding relates to the subway?

They’re saying that if we compare the subway to driving, both the amount of lawbreakers and the ratio of actual crimes to reported crimes are far larger. Only a small fraction of subway riders jump the turnstile, whereas just about everyone speeds.

> you gonna count speeding too

Pushing/running red lights. Rolling stops. Not signalling.

12 years ago, I remember this very well. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/nypd-report-confirm...

On a subway I smell a lot more

Society is not going off the rails nor a crime ridden cesspool. It's thriving and doing well. We just seem drawn to when it does go off the rails and notice it more imo.

How much of that is because the public has stopped reporting crimes because the city doesn’t do anything about them? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/01/nyregion/subway-violence-...

On December 22 the same day that woman was burned alive, a man was also stabbed to death. Another two stabbing New Year’s Day. There were 10 murders on the subway in 2024, up from 3 in 2019. People were pushed onto the tracks 25 times in 2024.

How many people should get pushed onto the tracks before it’s okay to complain?

You really think the police don’t know when someone gets pushed onto the tracks?

Anyway:

> There were 10 murders on the subway in 2024, up from 3 in 2019. People were pushed onto the tracks 25 times in 2024.

Meanwhile, car crashes killed 253 people in 2024 — 10× the number of track pushings and 25× the number of subway murders, according to your data.

People appeal to emotion with lurid stories like the woman burned alive because the whole “the subway is dangerous!” narrative falls apart when you actually look at the data (and frankly when you actually ride it).

Not always! If the suspect doesn't stay on scene and the victim goes to the hospital but declines to prosecute, which MOST people do in NYC, like magic, there is no crime committed.

You have to love all the misguided stats from everyone OUTSIDE NYC.

Go do a ride alone with CA, let us know how well you sleep after a full tour.

Meanwhile, I’m sure there are absolutely no hit-and-runs in NYC. Every time a pedestrian gets injured, the police diligently log and investigate it.

You’re a cop, right? You should start by taking a look at the magical crime-free zone right in front of your precinct, where your car can block a fire hydrant or the sidewalk, and parking tickets don’t exist.

Police don't make the laws, we enforce them. Currently if you are in an accident with a pedestrian, and you don't leave the scene, even if there is a fatality, there is nothing more than a summons issued, even if the pedestrian has right of way. NYC is a Democrat supermajority and has been for decades. They just made jaywalking legal, not that I've ever written a jaywalker in over 14 years.

Another NYC rule is that on police streets, where there is a precinct, it is self enforcement and the CO of the command has the final say.

Nothing stopping you from pressing the NYC City Council from changing the rules or the law.

Police enforce some laws against some people some of the time. The “self enforcement zones” you’re describing don’t make parking on the sidewalk any less illegal — they just mean the cops there can allow themselves to break the law.

Does 'throwaway519' live in NYC? Doubtful.

What 'throwaway519' doesn't know, because they don't work in an NYPD precinct, is that most subway crime is not reported, and if it is reported, it is downgraded, or outright dismissed. When a crime is committed and the suspect gets a DAT, once they have completed 6 months without another offense, the crime is deleted from the reported crime numbers. How do I know this? 14 years on the job in Manhattan--and I've never seen it this bad. We get 150 complaints a day at my precinct for Subway crime. 147 crimes... What. a. joke.

You couldn't find the reply button?

We get it, all facts and figure are to be ignored. The guy on the Internet feels it in his gut (if he even lives in the area) and has some little anecdote. So just take his word it's all terrible and you should be scared of everything.

When you collect data if it doesn't reflect what you know about reality, check again how you are collecting data.

If citizens no longer think reporting a crime will lead to justice, will they still report crimes?

My lived experience is that London is not as safe as it used to be. If the data tells me otherwise I will tell you a KPI driven org is gaslighting me

What if it's just someone lying on the internet.

I don't live in NYC so I can't comment on what happens in NYC but when people point at data and blame social media for altering perceptions I find it disingenuous for my lived experiences in London.

You only truly realise how unsafe London is after you leave and live somewhere that is safe.

The reason we use data is because we’ve discovered, over and over, that people’s “lived experience” is actually unreliable.

Anyway obviously there’s more crime than ends up being reported, but less than people’s worst estimates.

Where'd my little cupcake go?

> I will tell you a KPI driven org is gaslighting me

That's still just the same old issue aggregate statistics vs. a data point. They tell you something, on average, is this way, but you experienced it in another way, so you say "the statistics must be wrong".

> you know about reality

So the issue is: is your model of "reality" the correct one?

The discussion thus far has been about the incentivized manipulation of the data points as they come in. Aggerating those into statistics will produce misleading and incorrect results. Its not that an an individual data point can be different than the average, its that the flow of individual data points into the average is being 'managed' as people try to 'improve' these KPIs.

Sure, but is the data collection truly incorrect? He argues that it is because "his experience" doesn't match the data. So in the end it is about data points being different than average.

I can't say for sure one way or the other. But my experience has been that people that have KPI metrics to meet will do a lot of things to game those data points to their favor.

Well, there's also Goodhart's Law [1]. Maybe that's what OP meant to reference.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Typical response from someone who doesn't live or work in NYC. Probably lives in in MN or some other rural town. So no, I don't think you "get it."

I'm at Midtown South on 35th between 8th and 9th Aves, closer to 9th Ave. That covers the Penn Station area up to the south portion of Times Square. Compstat says we've had 15 'verified' Transit crimes YTD at my command. That's ONE of 78 precincts. But come by and see for yourself... sit in the lobby where you can see all the suspects walked in and their charges read by the patrol supervisor. Count the number of Transit suspects that come in and then compare to the BS Compstat number that says we've had 15 for the year so far.

And please, do share where you live and work.As far as how old this account is, I got it before I went to the Academy and per Dept. regulations, I never post as a MOS. Someone should make you a Det. Specialist though--you are quite a 'special' keyboard warrior/investigator. Reminds me of Shane Gillis' uncle who made the grilled cheese sandwiches.

I live in the 24th precinct and I'm sitting in my office right now a couple blocks away from you, in the midtown south precinct.

So I'm genuinely curious: if there's a constant parade of suspects coming into your building, but compstat doesn't reflect it, why the discrepancy? Are the police simply not recording these crimes?

Downgrades and straight dismissals. If there is no weapon and you do not have ID on you, you walk. Used to be, no ID, you went down to Central Booking, where you would be ID'd and be very unhappy with the conditions. That ended with COVID. Patrol sup decides charges, Not AO. Insp. gets dinged at Compstat if numbers go up, so, numbers are 'managed' -- at every command. DAT's disappear in 6 months. Most get a DAT. Why do you think everyone who could leave this job, did?

Wait, so they haul these people to your precinct, read the charges aloud (as you said before), then let them go because they don’t have ID?

Most people are scared of violent crimes. If it is a felony, I doubt it gets removed after 6 months.

How many people are robbed, assaulted, violated or killed on the subway ?

Those are the numbers that matter. Talking about vague 'crimes' is a pointlessly low resolution.

This may be a naive take, and I haven't been to NYC in a decade, but I think that number should ideally stay close to zero. There's a concentrated amount of surveillance, a gated entry, and limited escape options. Combine that with potentially stiff penalties for violent crime, that should be a potent deterrence.

We have access to crime data, but what about the data on failure rates of specific crime mitigation tools? Is there any way for the public to audit things such as the reliability of security cameras, or crimes that were solved with the help of surveillance footage, good samaritans, etc? If not, when was the last time someone tried to get that implemented? It probably wouldn't do much in the short term, but over time could drive optimizations.

I think it is an accumulation of small failures over time that don't seem worth mentioning individually, but in aggregate can have the most impact on the crime rate.

Take my ideas with a grain of salt though, I'm only a layman on the subject.

what do you mean "gated entry" and "limited escape options"? Like that if a crime happens, police should be able to stop the perpetrator immediately as they come out of any subway station? Sounds pretty optimistic to me.

I used the word “deterrence” though to close the thought :) people looking to do crime should find an easier place. But maybe it’s harder to get away with it on the streets of manhattan than on the subway, I’d have to ask a cop or a criminal to really know I suppose… I also heard sentences have been light in NYC, so maybe repeat offenders are everywhere and expect to eventually get caught anyway.

There’s no absolute need to guarantee or even catch the majority of them for a deterrence to be effective. But if it’s not effective (cameras broken, etc) then word will get around fast. That is the idea anyway.

But yeah I don’t have much confidence in government to do a great job there, unless the victim is a Fortune 500 CEO.

Complaints =/= Crime

The subway has millions of riders in a day. One hundred and fifty complaints per precinct (which is a generous estimation) is nothing, and the NYPD is a failure of an organization that pays over half a hundred million dollars a year on misconduct lawsuits. NYPD officers have a higher crime rate than the people of New York.

That says more about the people in charge of the department than the officers, though I'd also bet that the crime rate isn't that bad in the subways.

It’s similar in our neighborhood in California.

Before we bought, we checked a crime statistics site, and it said the crime rate was zero near our place.

In reality, burglaries, etc, are extremely common, but the police don’t update the database.

Obviously there's some sampling bias in your response.

That aside, we can assume that the ratio of crimes to reports remained constant - because there's no reason to think otherwise. So if the ratio of reports to daily riders is now lower, even if there are billions of un-reported crimes as long as the ratio improved it did become safer on a per-ride basis.

Note that also you have a roughly 1% lifetime risk of dying in a car accident in the United States and your risk of dying on a train rounds to zero. So on balance, I strongly suspect you're safer even if there's a lot of unreported petty crime.

My understanding is that per person-hour, the subway doesn't get much more crime than any other outdoor public space.

I wish we could be more specific about these labels. Whats a “complaint”?

Is that a disagreement over an empty seat or a woman getting burned to death. Are those in the same bucket?

Yes, “mentally ill man made me feel uncomfortable” is definitely underreported, but it’s hard to believe murders and assaults are underreported. And if those are down, this is a huge win.

Being "uncomfortable" does not convey a crime. Misdemeanors or felonies only. Jumping turnstiles and fare evasion were always a collar. Now it's just a ticket (violation).

The technicalities of what does or doesn't convey a crime is wholly irrelevant to the voting public. Voting being both at the ballot box, and w/ their dollars towards the MTA.

It's a signal we aren't measuring and it's massively affecting rider behavior.

What you say doesn't in and of itself, have any effect on this. If what you say is true then it's always the case that crime is underreported, always the case that crime is deleted from reported crime numbers, always the case that crimes get downgraded...

So given that this is a consistent property of reported crime, you still need to explain why the number of reported crimes is lower now than before.

Crime reports are manipulated. A friend got hit in the head and NYPD refused to register it. Despite that, NYC is very safe compared to most of the US, and articles that say otherwise are just trying to manipulate you.

> A friend got hit in the head and NYPD refused to register it.

I think that's awful and hope your friend didn't get hurt too bad. I think anytime a victim (or a family member filing on behalf of a victim) makes a police report, it should be mandatory that they're provided a way to confirm the data and facts associated with it.

Also mandatory information on how to report a mistake or correction or complaint, and that process should be quick and painless, not something that takes any time at all. Because who is going to take hours out of their day to report a mistake if it already felt like a waste of time so far?

Some of the above may already exist, but without all of those components working well, it becomes dysfunctional.

I don't think the police are likely to implement something like the above in a way that works, and legislation mandating it will lack the flexibility, and only the bare minimum required will be done, if that.

To fix something dysfunctional often takes strong leadership that few have. Combine that with the negative incentives for running for public office when conditions are "just reasonably ok". Unless the conditions reach existential threat levels, we just end up with the usual career politicians willing and able to survive the inevitable scrutiny (and slander) regarding their personal lives. Some of that scrutiny is justified and necessary, much of it is not.

I would assume its not the "real" number as you pointed out. But as a proxy it still has value and still speaks to the safety of the NYC subway system.

The trend is what is important. Crime is dropping - and it was already fairly safe before and is only improving.

(Yeah, I live in NYC)

Crime is not dropping. Follow Sam Antar on X. He's a forensic accountant and (proud) former felon. He unpacks all the crime numbers and all the fu*kery from the city and dept.

I did, still have property there in fact, and hope to return someday, but no time soon. What you are saying is absolutely correct. Crime is rampant and goes completely unreported, due to some mix of people being desensitized and the feeling of futility it has. Every time you go out you’re quite likely to have or at least witness some kind “incident”. Maybe a guy lunging at an elderly Asian woman, perhaps a man riding around in circles in the middle of Houston in a stolen Citibike wielding a wooden club at people passing by, or quite possibly someone walking by drops their shoulder and tries to shove you for absolutely no reason. That’s the baseline, constant menacing, aggression of drug addled lowlifes with everyone just pretending nothing is happening. If this boils over into some kind of more significant incident maybe people will pull out their phones and record it for social media, but nobody is filing a police report.

I travel quite a lot, visiting around 20 countries a year, often staying for weeks or even months in different cities around the world. I haven’t seen this kind of behavior anywhere else outside the US or Canada. Not even in quite “dangerous” cities in Latin America (I did see one guy try to rob someone on a bus, the other passengers beat him, stripped him naked, and the driver slowed down and opened the door while they threw him out onto the street), nothing like this in Asia, and definitely not anywhere in Europe.

Something is seriously wrong in US culture. Personally I think it’s the amount of drugs Americans consume.

I was with you until you said this doesn’t happen in other countries. There are some countries (e.g. Japan, Singapore) where it doesn’t happen, but it certainly does in major European cities. There’s you way you can say London, for example, is that different from New York.

London in particular is a great example because the two cities are similar in many ways. London for sure has its share of junkies and hooligans, and I even hear people complaining about it using almost word for word identical language, but the magnitude and pervasiveness is completely different. Especially riding the tube vs the NYC subway is a completely different experience most of the time and I don’t get the feeling in London that the inmates are running the asylum that NYC has gotten over the past few years. Same story walking the streets in the west end vs lower Manhattan, sure you’ve got the phone snatchers on e-bikes now that constantly make the news and there’s random deranged people, but it’s less common for one, but more importantly it hasn’t crossed the threshold where it’s been normalized and people are desensitized, so even in these cases people are less brazen, less aggressive. London today feels more like NYC did in 2019, before it passed the tipping point. Even there I think its a lot more tranquil than NYC was back then, but at least the city hadn’t been surrendered as it is now.

I think this happens in London too. Crime is so normalised that both the residents and police see a creep in their threshold for what is a "serious" crime.

My apartment block sees package theft almost daily and there was a parking spot that was getting hit by smash and grabs almost daily at one point. We have up reporting them because the police were pretty nonchalant about doing anything about it. The only reason I think most crime at this level ever gets filed is for insurance claims. But if people are so squeezed they don't have insurance they wouldn't report them

So is this a new approach for 2025? Since they're just comparing it to last year's data, to invalidate the thesis that crime is down there'd need to be some significant change. If you could link to any actual source rather than just anecdotes that would be helpful.

As a fellow Manhattan resident, personally the subway (as well as the city in general) feel quite safe to me. I have experienced more issues with crime in SF and Seattle than here.

I have to admit that while I never believed the hysteria of “crime ridden cities” and my wife and I started traveling a lot post Covid - including “crime ridden” [sic] places like Seattle and San Francisco - I have to admit that I always thought the subway system in NYC would be some dystopian nightmare.

When I went there in 2023 during the US Open, we rode the subway everywhere and I didn’t feel the least bit nervous.

Police vigilance rises during special events. It's not an ever day occurrence

As a NYC resident and white man, I found the subway broadly safe from _violent_ crime. My female and/or asian friends had significantly worse experiences: some were grabbed, others followed, some verbally harassed. It's not a dystopian nightmare — at the end of the day everyone just has somewhere to be — but regular ridership (particularly in Brooklyn and Queens) increments the bad experience counter regularly.

Thank you. The New York City subway has its issues, but most of them boil down to the fact that the system is really old and hard to modernize.

It also has unique strengths arising from the extreme population density and the inherent 24/7-ness of NYC (not to mention Manhattan's unique geography) but people don't talk about them as much as its flaws.

If your only reference point is transit in other US cities it's hard to grasp how different the NYC subway experience is, at least in Manhattan. Trains come every 5-10 minutes even at off-peak hours, and it's almost always busy. It's just not a very conducive environment for crime, unless you're riding in the middle of the night and/or at the tail ends of the system where density is lower.

When it comes to thinking about my own personal safety, I don't worry about crime on the subway, I worry about getting hit by a truck or e-bike rider.

Living in fear is a choice. There's many ways to interpret crime statistics and the one you choose is often a reflection of yourself more so than the situation.

This is just like some people feel they have to carry a gun to protect themselves.

I have never in 50 years thought that I would feel safer if I carried a gun. Now I have thought about getting one for my home briefly and if I lived in a less safe area of an isolated area pI would have one at home.

I've lived in NYC since 1996. I still take the subway after midnight every week. The biggest crime I've seen since the pandemic was someone lighting up a joint.

Stories about the crime ridden subways have the same ring of truth to them as Fox News' reporting on cities 'burning to the ground' from their midtown NYC offices on a sunny day when I was walking to the park. Or Trump labeling NYC an 'anarchist jurisdiction'.

NYC has a population of 8.3 million people. If NYC was a state, it'd be the 13th most populous. It has as many people as Alaska, Delaware, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming combined. It's easy to pretend crime is high when you forget about "per capita".

I say let that money pay for the public transportation and make that free.

You see this time and time again.

If you want to reduce crime in an area simply make it busier.

Jane’s been right all along

Jane Jacobs' "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"?

Yeah, it is busy with police...

>Mayor Eric Adams attributed the decline in subway crime to a number of factors, including the massive surge of 1,200 additional NYPD officers in the subway system, as well as an additional 300 officers patrolling overnight trains

So which is the cause of the lower crime, congestion pricing, increased ridership, or the 1,500 additional officer surge? How long will this surge be sustained?

You are spot on. The surge is I believe expected for the next 6 months. I read there are 6 on each route.

Time will tell but I suspect its the increased ridership (helped by congestion pricing). The NYPD have been in the system for months and it didn't make much of a difference in the stats as far as I recall.

Congestion pricing is the most recent and significant changed variable.

Adams is busy trying to curry favour with Trump so he doesn't go to jail.

It's not entirely inconceivable that he might be telling the truth, but he's an extremely unreliable source.

I predicted this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42619051

It would be nice to see some of that money go towards subway improvements. This is still the worst subway system I have used anywhere in the world: it is loud, it is slow, it is unreliable. Even Boston's right next door is so much cleaner, roomier, and more modern. Surely if the city taxes people into using the subway, they will do something to improve the subway?

Safety is a start I guess but is hard to judge when it had been declining for years. I am hopefully.

You’re in luck! The revenue from congestion pricing directly funds the MTA’s Capital Plan. https://www.mta.info/document/133541

Great, thanks for the link!

The T is nicer, sure. It's also a fraction the size of the MTA, ass slow, and doesn't run past bedtime. Plus we're barely two years out from when it was often (literally) on fire.

Excuse my jadedness, but at least when I'm in NY the subway will get me where I'm going - and usually on time too

If you have a lot of people on public transport it’s hard to loiter. That helps keep druggies away

I was very skeptical of the congestion pricing policy but I have to confess that it frigging worked. Based on my observations it significantly reduced traffic not only in lower Manhattan but also in NJ coming into Holland Tunnel. It does not change the fact though that this was done more so as a money grab by the MTA.

It charges people for the privilege of driving their car into the densest part of the largest city in the country. They could take all the money and burn it, and it still would have been worth doing.

As far as I can tell, no money goes to improving transit between New Jersey and New York

Perhaps that will change when the price goes up in a few years, assuming Phil Murphy gives up on frivolous lawsuits and asking the president to stick his nose in.

The price is going up this year to sprint back to $20 which is what it should cost if not for all the whining from non-residents of Manhattan.

I think that was because NJ rejected the revenue deal as they pushed back against congestion pricing.

For example: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/12/18/nj-refusing-generous-...

My hope is this will change as NJ accepts the outcome and benefits from it too.

I think this “it’s a money grab by the MTA” mentality is ignorant of the fact that no one thinks it was ever not a money grab. There is money to be grabbed by charging the drivers who put wear and tear on the streets. Manhattanites said “yes do this we don’t want the health effects from constant traffic, incentivize them not too drive in”. Drivers said “you can’t grab my money”. Manhattanites said “fine then don’t drive in”.

A money grab isn’t a bad thing, it’s a smart move for a highly romanticized city where space is precious.

It is a bad thing if you are simply going to waste it. I am happy to be proven wrong again but MTA has a consistent track record of doing that.

I agree it isn't a bad thing per se, but it should drive higher productivity and not be a net decrease in revenue.

If fewer people from New Jersey come to Manhattan, that's less revenue for restaurants and less sales tax collected. Taking that a step further, if those same workers work from their office in NJ or remotely, that's less income tax collected by the City, too.

Moreover, if you have a person living in Manhattan generating high revenue that is being taxed proportionally, having that person slogging through the bus / subway system an extra 30 - 60 minutes one way vs. taking a car is going to decrease the value they're creating. That means less revenue to tax from that person's business, and less taxes to collect from uber / taxi use. But hey, the City got that $2.90.

It's a complex relationship, and I'm not convinced this is going to be a net revenue generator on any level.

> It does not change the fact though that this was done more so as a money grab by the MTA.

Even if that were true, I have absolutely no problem with MTA grabbing some well deserved money.

So is congestion pricing working? I can't get a straight answer from googling.

I would say Yes but its still very early days.

>So is congestion pricing working? I can't get a straight answer from googling.

There are so many aspects of a policy like this, you have to be specific on what you mean by “working”.

Also, IMO, it’s too early to tell what the effects are going to be. Like everything else, people will react one way initially and then may soften later on.

Are you asking someone who drives a car or anyone else? That might impact what one considers as "working."

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Karma please. I think crime is down on NY subways because Daniel penny got aquited of his murder charge. Showing that you too can murder obnoxious drug addicts and only be financially ruined but not imprisoned.

When does Trump claim he fixed it

More police and less crime - you don’t say.

Real takeaway is make an area expensive and crime will go away, since poor people will too. Basically the safest areas are the richest.

Although mentioned in the article as something Eric Adams has said, that's not actually what the article is talking about - this is comparing subway crimes before and after congestion pricing

There was massive deployment of police in 2024 and this is YoY, per the data crime has been on a downward trend the whole year really and even throughout 2023. Despite the news New York subways have never really been dangerous at large.

Not to mention the deployment of the national Guard, more surveillance, etc.

Yes, but the article is talking about how YoY crime is down last month, while ridership has _increased significantly this month_, so the crime rater per capita is _significantly_ down.

Ok. What is your point exactly, I do not disagree.

The point is that the decrease in crime per capita is uncorrelated with police presence.

Great. I never said such things anyway. My original comment was a quip on Adam’s comment…

... So the population of commuters that were displaced from being car users and had to become subway users, did not bring additional criminals to the subway with them?

Not really. There was a state-funded deployment in 2022 that ran out of money and the 2024 city-funded surge replaced it.

1,200 officers per day funded by the state down to 1,000 per day funded by the city IIRC

Subjectively, and it appears borne out in the data from a cursory glance, it seems things got really fucked during and right after COVID and have been getting better across the board since then. Crime also fell, for example, outside of the subway system which had no similar surges.

I have a feeling some of the policies recent are also in effect addressing it too. Not entirely a fan of all the policies but to see something good of it come is nice.

Where’d you get the idea that we made the area expensive? It was already expensive. Then crime went down 36%.

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