New York Gov. Hochul Deploying National Guard To Do Subway Bag Checks

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) announced Wednesday that she’s dispatching 1,000 law enforcement officers, comprised mostly of National Guard members, into the New York City subway system following recent attacks on riders and employees.

The plan is for 750 National Guard officers, and 250 state and MTA police officers to patrol, conduct bag checks and deter criminal activity in the city’s busiest transit stations.

“These brazen, heinous attacks on our subway system will not be tolerated,” Hochul said at a press conference, highlighting recent attacks: a 64-year-old man being kicked into the tracks at Penn Station on Sunday, a 27-year-old rider getting slashed on the hands in an apparent homophobic attack Friday and a subway conductor named Alton Scott being slashed in the neck on Thursday while leaning his head out of the train.

Some of the attacks have also turned deadly. Last month, six people were shot on the platform of a Bronx subway station, leaving one dead. Another rider was killed on a train in the Bronx last month following either a gunshot wound or a puncture wound to the chest.

While the incidents Hochul highlighted are chilling, the reality is there has been a relatively small uptick in crime in transit spaces compared to last year. The New York Police Department has tallied 388 crimes in the subway system from the first of the year through March 3, compared to 343 in that same time period last year.

And according to NYPD data, crime rates in transit spaces have held relatively steady over 20 years, with an uptick in 2020 being the exception.

But Hochul dismissed the data Wednesday.

“I’m not here today to talk to you about numbers and tell you stats and statistics about what’s going up or what’s going