NEW YORK CITY–Mayor Eric Adams commented Thursday on the government’s demand that New York show what it’s doing to protect public transit passengers, saying the city is actually a model for the rest of the country.
A March 18 letter from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy contained a request for the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to share information concerning fund allocation, crime data, and employee training or face possible redirecting or cutting of funds.
“Notably, there have been a number of high-profile safety related incidents occurring on the system, and citizens of the city have openly expressed their support for expanded care for individuals struggling with mental illness to specifically address some of these safety concerns.”
Those incidents include a woman being burned to death on a train in December and a man being pushed onto the tracks in January.
If the city does not provide actions and plans to reduce crime, details on employees receiving deescalation training, and subway crime data by March 31, Duffy said the department will take “enforcement actions up to and including redirecting or withholding funding.”
At a March 20 press conference for the city’s Mental Health Week, Adams said he would invite federal officials to New York “to come down and walk the system with us to see what we’re doing.”
“It is so important to see on the ground what we are doing, and it really is a model. What we’ve done in the city around homelessness, is a model that can be duplicated across the entire country,” the mayor said.
Noting that “if it’s untreated, severe mental health illness is a known risk factor for violence and crime,” Adams acknowledged that “those who are dealing with severe mental health issues for the most part ... are showing a level of display that is alarming to New Yorkers.”
However, Adams said that what his administration is doing with the homeless and mentally ill “is really a model.”
“I’m going to ... invite our federal lawmakers to come in and see what we’re actually, what we are doing,” he said.
Adams praised the city’s Partnership Assistance for Transit Homelessness (PATH) program, which pairs outreach and mental health professionals with specially trained police who specialize in de-escalation.
“Since launching at the end of August, PATH teams have had over 11,000 engagements and delivered services over 3,000 times to New Yorkers in need,” the mayor said.
“Since the start of our Subway Safety Plan three years ago we have connected 8,400 New Yorkers to shelter, with over 860 people placed in permanent affordable housing. Those numbers speak for themselves.”
Despite public alarm, Adams said overall crime in the subway system is down, with “two straight years of index crime declines.”
At the end of January, in partnership with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, the city began deploying two police officers on every subway train during overnight hours.
“Thanks in part to those efforts, year to date subway crime is down 28 percent,” Adams said.
Although overall crime is down, felony assaults were up last year and were the highest in 24 years, with an increase of 5 percent from 2023. There were 10 murders in the New York City subway system last year, up from five murders in 2023.
