Excessive-profile random assaults — notably the horrific arson by which a lady was burned to dying on an F prepare — “overshadowed” New York Metropolis’s supposed successes in reining in subway crime throughout 2024, Mayor Eric Adams contended Tuesday.
Adams, throughout a defiant end-of-year information convention, repeated his years-long mantra that the “notion” of out-of-control subway crime should be curtailed.
“We’re doing the job on bringing down the numbers, however as I say time and again and I stated in 2022, New Yorkers should really feel protected,” he advised reporters from Metropolis Corridor.
“Persons are seeing and feeling what they’re studying. So, our success is overshadowed.”
Newly put in NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch will ship extra officers onto subway platforms and into trains themselves to interact straphangers, Adams stated, with out offering particulars on what number of further cops or when or the place they might be deployed.
His press convention got here practically concurrently with an NYPD announcement that investigators recognized the straphanger who was burned to dying greater than every week in the past as Debrina Kawam, 57, of New Jersey.
Kawam was allegedly set aflame by unlawful Guatemalan immigrant Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, who faces first-degree homicide expenses within the sadistic assault.
The surprising, caught-on-video spectacle of Kawam’s physique consumed by hearth on an F prepare in Coney Island — all whereas the accused killer fanned the flames, earlier than calmly sitting to observe the lethal pyre — punctuated a yr of issues that the subways are returning to the unsafe unhealthy previous days.
The fears led the red-bereted Guardian Angels and the crusaders’ flamboyant founder, Curtis Sliwa, to return for the primary time in years to patrol the subways, the place straphangers greeted them like previous buddies.
Adams warned Sliwa, his Republican opponent within the 2021 mayoral election, to not “overstep.”
The mayor maintained the subway system solely has six reported crimes a day, however a deeper have a look at NYPD crime statistics exhibits violent crime, together with homicide, has been rising on the rails.
The arson slaying tipped subway murders to 10 this yr — double the variety of murders in 2023 and matching a 25-year excessive reached in 2022, information present.
Different assaults have been additionally at excessive ranges — a reality punctuated by a straphanger being pushed in entrance of a 1 prepare in Manhattan shortly after Adams’ press convention.
As Adams insisted the subways are protected, he additionally disregarded his scandal-plagued yr that noticed lots of his prime embattled friends pushed out.
The latest ouster was NYPD Chief of Division Jeffrey Maddrey, who resigned amid explosive accusations that he demanded sexual favors from a subordinate in change for large quantities of additional time.
Adams sidestepped a query about whether or not he, as mayor, bore duty for appointing allegedly problematic officers resembling Maddrey. He as an alternative contended the buck stopped with whether or not his officers ship outcomes.
“It’s my duty to make it possible for the persons are employed to town ship for the folks of New York, and I take that duty,” he stated.
The mayor additionally argued each Massive Apple administration has had its fair proportion of disgraced officers.
“Life is difficult,” he stated when pressed by The Put up, later telling reporters he had “no regrets” from 2024.
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