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Comment by throwaway519 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

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.

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.

In fact they may encourage him.

> 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.

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

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

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."

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.

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.

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...

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

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)

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...

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.

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.

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

> 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).

Are you sure it wasn't a strawman?

Safer than driving, you say?

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.

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?

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

AFAIK they're mostly watching the turnstiles.

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.

On a subway I smell a lot more

> 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.

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.

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