Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday detailed how the NYPD will implement a new strategy to place two uniformed officers on every subway car running overnight — an initiative first announced in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s State of the State address last week.
The latest surge of cops into the subways, aimed at stemming violent crimes on the system that have grabbed headlines in recent weeks, began on Monday night, Adams said during his weekly news conference on Tuesday. The strategy will see 300 uniformed officers deployed between the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. across nearly 150 trains between the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. for the next six months. There will be two officers assigned to each train.
“This is not a new conversation about subway safety and how we get it under control,” Adams said. “Thanks to our partnership with the governor, there will be two uniformed officers assigned to each train between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.”
Adams said the new deployment began with 100 officers on Monday night and will scale up to 300 officers in the coming weeks.
NYPD Transit Chief Joseph Gulotta said that once the pair of cops are on the train, the conductor will announce their presence to all of the passengers. He added that they would get off and move to the next car at each stop.
Gulotta said the first 100 officers are being deployed on the A, G, J, and L lines.
The chief said the officers would ride and not inspect the trains, meaning they would not disrupt service in most cases. However, officers may need to hold up trains for inspections if they investigate a particular matter.
“Whatever we have to do to make sure people are safe, we’re going to implement,” Adams said. “When officers walk through and do an inspection, it’s not just a routine inspection, it is also [that] the officers may be looking for someone, they may have gotten calls over their radio, may be walking through.”
The 300 cops inside the train cars will join another 750 officers Hochul pledged to patrol station platforms throughout the system.
But the deployment comes with a hefty price tag. It will be paid for through $77 million in state funds to cover the additional NYPD overtime needed for the surge.
During his preliminary budget rollout for the coming fiscal year last Thursday, Adams said he was willing to pay any price to keep the subways safe.
“I’m going to use every dollar that’s needed to keep this city safe; that’s my North Star,” Adams said at the time. “If we have to use overtime to do it, we’re going to use overtime to do it.”
Adams and Hochul have both placed a renewed emphasis on combating subway crime and making the transit system feel safer amid a recent spate of high-profile violent incidents on the transit system.
Those include a homeless woman being burned alive on a Brooklyn F train late last year and a man being stabbed on a Manhattan 2 train on New Year’s Day.
