Gov. Kathy Hochul conceded Friday that there is nothing to prevent New York City subway users from opting for another station to avoid undergoing bag checks in the system, amid a recent escalation in the practice announced earlier this week.
Hochul made the comments during a Friday interview on PIX11, following her move on Wednesday to deploy 750 national guard members and 250 state and MTA police officers into the city’s transit system to assist the NYPD with random bag checks. The searches are meant to screen for concealed weapons that potential perpetrators could use to attack fellow subway riders.
The controversial action appeared to come in response to several violent incidents that occurred in the subways over the past few weeks — including three murders since the start of the year and an MTA conductor’s throat being slashed last week.
When asked by PIX11 anchor Dan Mannarino what would prevent passengers who do not want their bags checked from simply going to another station where there’s no law enforcement present, Hochul said “nothing will, that’s the point.”
“This is not heavy-handed … it is nowhere near where stop and search was, a policy I did not support because it was targeting individuals particularly from communities of color,” she continued. “We’re not ever going back to that. That’s why this is statistically random.”
However, riders cannot enter at the station where they exercised their Fourth Amendment rights by refusing the bag check.
Hochul said the increased checks are more about deterring potential perpetrators from committing violence on the subways than intercepting every weapon they try to sneak onto the system.
“If you’re someone who’s thinking of bringing a gun on the subway, you might think twice,” Hochul said. “And that’s what this is about, to get the psychology of the criminals to say, I think I won’t do this because I have a better chance of getting caught now. It’s a deterrent effect.”
Nonetheless, Hochul’s decision to send soldiers into the city’s subways has been panned from seemingly all sides since she made the announcement.
The New York Civil Liberties Union called the governor’s move “heavy-handed” and said it harkens back to the broken-windows policing era of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said more policing is not the best way to address violence in the subways.
“There are ways to address this issue … other than more policing into the subway system,” the speaker said. “We need to take a look at the root causes. Where is the investment in mental health service?”
Hochul’s plan was also slammed by top NYPD officials, who defended their progress on battling transit crime, which has dropped in recent weeks after the department added thousands more officers back into the system.
“Transit crime is [down] 12% in the last 5 weeks because of extra cops deployed, a planned commitment by [the NYPD and the Mayor Eric Adams],” NYPD Chief of Department John Chell wrote in a Thursday X post. “Our transit system is not a “war” zone! Bag checks have been around since 2005???”
Chell then went on to say the real way to stem subway crime is to totally undue criminal justice reforms enacted by the state legislature in 2019, even though Hochul has already instituted numerous rollbacks to those laws.
“This is what New Yorkers want and deserve,” he said. “All stakeholders do your job! Keep our city safe.”
