People wait for a train in a subway station June 18, 2003 in New York City. A new report by the New York Police Department (NYPD) reports that felonies are down 15 percent this year on New York’s subways. The NYPD credits an increase in officers at subway stations for part of the drop in crime on trains and stations. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
New York Police Department (NYPD) data has shown that murders on New York City subways have surged 60%, nearing a new record.
According to NYPD data, eight people were killed on subway cars or in stations as of September 8, up from five in the same period last year.
The murder rate is on track to match the 25-year high set in 2022, when 10 people were killed.
Jakeba Dockery, 42, whose husband, Richard Henderson, was fatally gunned down in January on a train in Brooklyn said that “It’s not a safe environment to be waiting for the train.”
“It just feels evil,” she told The New York Post.
The latest subway death occurred on September 5th, shortly after 11 p.m., when a gunman shot grocer Freddie Weston, 47, near the MetroCard booth at the Rockaway Avenue station in Brooklyn, according to police and his family.
Weston’s sister stated that her brother could have been saved if cameras had been installed near the station’s ticketing area.
The increase in murders continues despite a variety of high-profile initiatives that helped to stop an early-year surge in crime underground. Heavy-traffic stations were flooded with 750 National Guardsmen, and an additional 1,000 NYPD officers were deployed to monitor the subway system.
“This overall crime reduction is due in large part to thorough investigations by detectives into every major crime within the subway, and the proactive work of officers deployed in the transit system,” a NYPD spokesperson said. “This year alone, those very officers removed 43 guns (compared to 28 last year) and 1,536 knives (compared to 1,004 last year) from the subway system, the highest weapons seizure rates in the last decade.”