Four subway stabbings rocked the New York City transit system Saturday, a day after Mayor Eric Adams announced his plans for safer public transit.
At Van Siclen Avenue station on the 3 line in East New York, Brooklyn, someone punched a 20-year-old woman in the back on the Manhattan-bound platform at 2:50 p.m. on Feb. 19.
The two then got into an argument and the rogue pulled out a blade and stabbed her in the stomach three times.
Paramedics brought the victim to a nearby hospital in stable condition.
Police released an image captured on surveillance cameras of the man they believe to be the suspect in this case.
Later that day uptown in Washington Heights, a 24-year-old man was leaving the 168th Street station of the A, C, and 1 lines at 8:30 p.m. when two teenagers jumped him and tried to rob him, according to a police spokesman.
One of them pulled out a boxcutter and stabbed him in the leg, but they fled without taking anything from him.
His wound was only a small puncture and he refused medical treatment at the scene, cops said.
A half an hour later at 9 p.m., a 31-year-old man was riding on a southbound 1 train in nearby Morningside Heights and got into an argument with a man and a woman, because the latter was smoking.
The man of the pair stabbed him with a knife in the left forearm and they escaped off the train at the 116th Street station.
The victim was brought to St Luke’s Hospital and is expected to survive, according to a police spokesman.
The incidents follow a brutal assault of an unhoused man at the Jamaica-Van Wyck station on the E/J lines in the early hours of Saturday just after 3 a.m.
A trio of brutes tried to rob the 46-year-old victim and stabbed him seven times before fleeing, police said.
Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul on Friday released another plan aimed at improving safety on the subway, with the mayor encouraging police to more strongly enforce the transit system’s rules of conduct.
Hizzoner also vowed to boot those experiencing homelessness from the system and direct them toward services.
The proposal was an expansion of Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul’s January plans of making cops an “omnipresence” underground and deploying New York’s Finest in record numbers to the trains last month.
Despite police numbers in the transit system being at all time highs, assaults in trains and at stations have risen in the first weeks of new year compared to 2021, when ridership was significantly lower; and to pre-pandemic levels when it was higher, according to NYPD statistics provided to the MTA.
There were 45 felony assaults in January of 2022, compared to 43 that time last year and 33 in 2020 before the outbreak of COVID-19 led to plummeting passenger numbers.
Robberies and grand larcenies were also up in January over same time in 2021, however, the two offenses along with all other violent crimes except for assaults were down compared to pre-pandemic figures.
Daily trip numbers on the subways for January were also still down, with 47.6% of 2019 numbers taking the trains as the outbreak of the Omicron variant caused a dip in commutes in the new year.
While the city and state have been touting plans to combat crime and homelessness in the subway with an aim to bring back more riders, crime in the subway system only makes up a tiny fraction of the city’s overall numbers, as a former transit police chief has noted.
Recent NYPD stats from the last 28 days show that the 178 transit crimes made up about only 2% of the 8,810 total crimes citywide during that period.
