Fear on the Subway: Perception and Reality

Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at the perceptions and the realities of crime in the subway. And, because it’s the first day of the state legislative session, we’ll look at the colonial-era lawyer who compiled a book of state laws when state government was brand-new.

Last year ended and 2025 began with a disturbing torrent of incidents in the subway: a woman burned to death on a subway car that was parked at the end of the line in Brooklyn, a man stabbed to death on a train in Queens and at least three other attacks.

Each heightened the perception that the subways are unsafe.

Mayor Eric Adams and Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, used the word “perception” seven times in a briefing on citywide crime statistics on Monday. “The subways will always be a bellwether for the perception of public safety in New York City,” Tisch said. “Declining crime numbers are significant, but we must still do more because people don’t feel safe in our subways.” Later the mayor said: “It is clear perception always overrides reality.”

I asked Andy Newman, who covers homelessness and poverty in New York — and used to cover transportation — to talk about the perception and reality of recent crimes in the subway.

The crime figures that Adams and Tisch released echoed a New York Times analysis of M.T.A. and police statistics from 2022, which showed that the chance of being a victim of violent crime in the subway was remote — roughly the same as the chance of being injured in a car crash during a two-mile drive. Why does the subway seem scarier?

People in cars tend to feel like the car itself is protecting them from external threats — it’s like you’re driving around in a little tank. I know, so is everyone else, but fear is not a rational thing.

In the subway, it’s just you, whoever else is there, and a train that weighs about 600 tons (not counting the passengers) barreling in.

And a subway car is a confined space where there may be no easy way to escape danger. That can make people feel trapped and vulnerable, which is scary.

Statistically, violent crime in the subway has seesawed in the last few years. But hasn’t there been an increase in several important categories, and doesn’t that go back to before the pandemic?

Yes, compared with before the pandemic, the number of murders in the subway has been higher in the last few years, though it has fluctuated a bit. Incidents of people getting pushed to the tracks have also risen, and the rate of felony assaults is more than double what it was before the pandemic. Misdemeanor assaults in the subway have also increased, though not as much. Robberies, for what it’s worth, have not.

So the perception that the city is less safe, or unsafe, is a lingering consequence of the pandemic?

A lot of people think that something changed during the pandemic and that there were suddenly more homeless people with untreated mental illness on the streets or in the subways.

People with serious mental illness are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators. But there is a certain percentage of psychotic people who are capable of lashing out.

Some of this may be due to a drop in the number of psychiatric beds in hospitals, but no one knows for sure.

There was a point at the height of the pandemic when paid ridership on the subway had plummeted and homeless people — who were avoiding shelters because they didn’t want to get sick — made some of the trains seem like rolling encampments. That’s no longer the case, but the perception is that things never quite went back to what they were before.

One transit advocate you talked to said that the M.T.A. has poured so many resources into stopping fare-beating. Would the subways be safer if there were more police officers and M.T.A. personnel on the platforms, instead of at the turnstiles?

It’s hard to say.

People have been pushed to the tracks even when police officers were patrolling on the platform but were not close enough to stop the attack. It takes only a second to push someone off the platform.

The police seem to believe that the people who habitually jump turnstiles are more likely to go on to commit more serious crimes once they’re in the subway system, so keeping them out prevents serious crime. But the police cannot be everywhere. It’s very hard to keep someone out if they want to go in.

Weather

Expect sunshine and wind gusts with temperature in the upper 20s. For tonight, look for partly cloudy skies with temperatures in the low 20s.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until Jan. 20 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).

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Today is the first day of the state legislative session in Albany, the first official workday for the Assembly and the State Senate.

In 2266, 242 years from now, will anyone still be talking about the laws they pass?

That question came to mind when Peter Klarnet, a senior specialist in Americana at Christie’s, picked up “Laws of the State of New York,” published 242 years ago, a compendium of actions taken by “the first session of the Senate and Assembly after the Declaration of Independence.”

It turned out that Klarnet was less excited about the book than about what he had found inside, a handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence, apparently the only manuscript copy in private hands. Christie’s plans to sell it in on Jan. 24. The presale estimate is $2 million to $3 million.

The manuscript was written by Samuel Jones, who had compiled “Laws of the State of New York” with another colonial-era New Yorker, Richard Varick. Their names live on — Jones’s in Jones Beach on Long Island and Great Jones Street in NoHo, and Varick’s on Varick Street in Lower Manhattan.

Klarnet said Jones’s legacy also included proposing compromise wording that broke a deadlock over the Bill of Rights and cleared the way for New York to ratify the federal Constitution. New York’s state Constitution was the only one that originally began with the Declaration of Independence; Jones apparently wrote out the manuscript that Christie’s is selling to take to the state’s ratification convention in 1788.

Looked at from the polarized 2020s, the back story of comity and compromise seems improbable: Jones had been a British loyalist during the Revolutionary War. But after the British surrendered, he became an ally of the state’s first governor, George Clinton, who had been on the side of the colonials as a brigadier general in the state militia.

The copy of “Laws of the State of New York” that Christie’s is selling has notes by Jones in the margin about laws that had been revised or repealed into the 1790s. He had been elected to the Assembly in 1786 and the State Senate in 1790, and in 1797 was appointed the state’s first comptroller.

So what about that question — the one about whether laws passed in this legislative session will be remembered 242 years from now?

I asked the current comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli.

“I hope you’re not thinking about congestion pricing,” he said, laughing.

Dear Diary:

On the train in Brooklyn,
a lady stood facing the doors.
She s-l-ow-l-y extended her front leg
in an elegant line
and pressed her toe into the ground
with purpose.
The toe lightly tapped
and tapped again.
The movement caught my eye — a dancer!
Gemstone-studded ballroom heels
peeked out of her “The Heart of NY” tote.
With front leg extended,
she lightly flicked the leg upward in a tango kick,
silently dancing on the way home.

— Sarah Jung

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.