New York authorities have dropped plans to increase the number of police working on subways as they solved the safety problem by ‘removing’ more than four thousand mentally ill and homeless people from the metro. New York Mayor Eric Adams spoke about it in an interview with Russian media.
According to him, the authorities initially wanted to attract “as many police officers as possible” to work in the subway, but then they decided to “stabilize the whole security system” by reducing the level of crime in the subway.
“There were people we observed and treated with very serious emotional disturbances. We identified all these people using the subway, they turned out to be more than four thousand people. We managed to remove people with mental health issues or the homeless from our subway system and as a result we managed to stabilize the whole system. Now the city can use the usual number of police officers,” Adams said.
The mayor of New York added that the peak in subway transportation is at the level of four million passengers per day, which means a return to pre-pandemic levels. In general, Adams pointed out, improving the level of public safety in the city is a necessary condition for its prosperity. Thus, the number of shootings in the city has “halved”, noted the mayor of New York, without however specifying the data for which period in question.
“The killings have gone down. And even if you look at some of the major crimes in our subway system, the New York City subway, they’ve gone down as well. The number of shootings in the city has dropped by almost 25% and the number of murders in 2023 will drop to double digits. I believe our police control model is working and New York is getting safer every day,” Adams says. In addition, he continued, the number of robberies, burglaries and large-scale thefts has also decreased.
Democrat and former police officer Eric Adams won in the November 2021 New York mayoral election, becoming the second African American in history to hold office. Previously, he served as Borough President of Brooklyn and also represented New York State in the Senate. As Interfax wrote in reference to the American edition of The Hill, Adams was distinguished by a moderate stance and was also known for the campaign to expand the police presence in the city.
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