A new report has found that serious crimes are increasing in New York City, including on the subway system, despite new mayor Eric Adams dismissing concerns.
The New York Post reported that Adams had dismissed concerns over increasing crime on the subway, claiming the concerns were merely a “perception of fear.”
“New Yorkers are safe on the subway system,” Adams said on Sunday. “What we must do is remove the perception of fear.”
But New York Police Department (NYPD) statistics tell a different story.
“Major Big Apple crimes jumped by more than a third in the first two weeks of this year compared to the same period in 2021 — with transit crimes alone soaring 65.5 percent,” the Post reported. “While the figures remain a small sample size, the upward trend provides an early challenge for Adams as he tries to reassure jittery straphangers that cops have everything in hand underground after several terrifying recent rail attacks, particularly Saturday’s horrific random fatal subway push in Times Square.”
The report said there were 96 incidents in the transit system compared to 58 last year, led by an increase in robberies and grand larcenies, but the overall number was lower than it was before the pandemic in 2019.
It’s not just transit system crime that is on the rise in New York City. Police data found that serious crime throughout the city has risen by 35.2% as of Sunday compared to the same time frame in 2021, the Post reported. The only serious crimes that haven’t increased are murders and burglaries.
Jessica Seymour, a mother who lives in Manhattan, told the Post that she doesn’t “go out anytime after dark now, not safe.”
“A guy got stabbed and another guy got shot right outside my son’s window,” she added. “We have two schools here, and this happens right here. My block has police on it all the time. There are shootings. There are drug dealers on our corner right now!”
Another resident, 31-year-old Monica Pollack, told The Post that Adams was wrong to say there was no reason to be concerned.
“The fear is real. Crimes are up,” Pollack told the outlet. “Eric Adams can say what he wants to promote ridership, but the fear is justified. He needs to do his job, not gaslight New Yorkers.”
More from the Post:
The latest tally of city felonies — which also include car theft, rape, robbery, assault and grand larceny — show they rose from both 2020 and 2017, or 11 percent and 24.6 percent, respectively, according to the data released Monday.
Shootings, which are not included in the main CompStat figures, also have not slowed, with Gotham recording 52 acts of gunplay so far this January compared to 45 for the same period last year.
That total is nearly double what it was over the same time in 2017, the data shows.
The NYPD data on serious crimes follows an earlier report showing that hate crimes were had also increased 100% over the previous year, The Daily Wire reported, with the majority of those targeted being either Asian or Jewish.
“What we are seeing is anti-Asian really increasing both by percentage and the raw number. I think when you look at anti-Semitic and anti-Asian, that’s over 50 percent of all of the hate crimes in New York City,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said in December. “It’s the same old song in terms of what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a little bit of mental illness. We’re seeing just disregard for common decency.”