New York city’s subway users are on edge, especially in the wake of recent violent incidents. According to an analysis conducted by the nonprofit organization Vital City, a majority of these frightening incidents occur at particular stations and at specific times.
The company said that at least half of all crimes recorded in subway stations or in their vicinity in recent years occurred at fewer than one-tenth of local stations. These include both the city’s largest and most important ones and smaller ones, where incidents occur with some frequency or late at night or during the early morning hours.
After careful study of NYPD and MTA data, Vital City determined that while serious crimes aboard subway cars are overall rare, between 2019 and 2024, assaults more than tripled from about 150 to 540. According to 2023 numbers, half of all violent crimes occurred at only 30 of the city’s 472 stations. The hubs that were frequently the scene of violence were among the busiest in the city.
Generally, most crimes were recorded at the 125th Street (Manhattan), Lexington Avenue (Manhattan), Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue (Queens), 59th Street-Columbus Circle (Manhattan), Franklin Avenue (Brooklyn) and Grand Central-42nd Street (Manhattan) stations. ““We really don’t know why the assaults are spiking,” Vital City reported, noting that researchers have yet to establish a solid link between a range of social factors and underground violence.
Reviewing NYPD data, the company found that most of the people arrested already had criminal records. Moreover, among the 10 percent of individuals taken into custody for violent crimes in the subway, nearly 80 percent had mental health problems and about 90 percent were classified at some point as emotionally disturbed or homeless.
“We’ve been saying for a long time that when mentally ill people shelter in the subways, it’s bad for them, bad for riders, and bad for the system that failed to provide proper help,” said John McCarthy, the MTA’s chief of policy and external relations, in a statement. “As this study shows, there’s no question this societal problem touches transit and has changed the nature of crime underground.”
Finally, Vital City’s analysis reveals that about 2,000 total crimes are recorded each year among the Big Apple’s subway platforms, mostly committed by people in their early 30s. Over the past month, the local subway has often been at the center of decidedly serious incidents.
In late December, a woman who was resting in a stationary car at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn was burned alive by a 33-year-old man from Guatemala. A few days later, a 45-year-old man was pushed under onto the tracks by a young thug along the tracks at the 18th Street hub in Manhattan. The man miraculously managed to save himself.
Following these incidents, Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul pledged to deploy hundreds more police officers along platforms and on trains to make passengers feel safer.
