Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul claimed her plan to make New York City’s metro system safer is showing results even after a shooting on a subway car days prior, The New York Post reported on Saturday.
Amid a surge in crime in New York City, Hochul announced on Mar. 6 she would deploy 750 state National Guard troops and 250 state troopers to the city’s metro stops to enforce the law and make riders feel safer. A man was shot in the head on a subway car en route to Brooklyn amid a physical confrontation with another man on Thursday.
Despite news of the shooting, Hochul claimed on Saturday that her plan to make New York City’s subway system safer is “working,” according to the Post.
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“My objective was to make sure [the National Guard is] in our main transit hubs – you see them at Grand Central [Station] and other places, so they can free up [New York Police Department officers],” Hochul told reporters at the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday. “So the plan is working as we had expected.”
Backlash followed Hochul’s announcement that armed guardsmen would be patrolling subway stations and stopping civilians at search checkpoints, according to the Post. Hochul subsequently amended the plan and swapped in unarmed guardsmen at search checkpoints, leaving only certain units armed.
Hochul did not directly respond to questions on Saturday as to how National Guard troops could be effective if they were not armed, according to the Post. She instead claimed that the National Guard was part of a larger effort to make the subway station safer.
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Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams also claimed on Friday that the metropolis is still “the safest city in America,” casting aside concerns about the shooting on board the subway, insisting it was an “isolated incident,” according to the Post.
“That is just a just a lot of BS,” Adams told Q104.3 FM’s Jim Kerr, according to the Post. “The city is resilient.”
New York City’s subway crime rate jumped 13% since 2023, the same percentage increase from the year prior, according to the Post.
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