Hundreds of additional police officers flooded the New York subway system to protect the danger amid an increase in violent crimes in transit – as government Andrew Cuomo says it is up to Big Apple officials to find out.
New York Police Chief Kathleen O’Reilly announced on Tuesday that the department will deploy more than 100 additional officers than previously planned, with 644 total police officers assigned to the subway system amid security problems after a terrifying series of attacks, officials said.
“We are able to achieve this through overtime, deploying officers who are normally assigned to administrative duties and being reassigned by other non-transit officers,” she told a New York Post news conference Tuesday morning.
Police officers said earlier this week they would move 500 additional officers to the metro system. But transit chiefs argued that was not enough and asked for another 1,000.
The NYPD arrested 21-year-old Rigoberto Lopez on Sunday and charged him with three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder for his alleged carnage along the A-train subway late Friday through Saturday.
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Lopez – dubbed the ‘A-Train Ripper’ by the New York Post, is accused of fatally stabbing a man and a woman and wounding two other stabbers in just hours.
According to police, a man’s lifeless body was discovered in Queens late Friday with a fatal knife wound in his torso and neck. About two hours later, 44-year-old Claudine Roberts was also found stabbed to death in a train car in Manhattan.
Lopez allegedly carried out two other non-fatal attacks on adult men in subway stations in Manhattan, and police believe all the victims were homeless.
Investigators later recovered the alleged murder weapon and Lopez admitted the crimes, according to a criminal charge. On Monday, a judge ordered that he be detained without bail.
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“To the victims, the families of the victims, we are 100% committed to bringing about justice … to shut down the families of this horrific incident,” Dermot Shea, commissioner of the NYPD, said at a previous press conference .
During a Tuesday appearance on Spectrum NY1, ahead of O’Reilly’s announcement, Shea said the NYPD has recorded 62 crimes in transit so far this year.
He said the department would also seek help from its partners as it tackles the issues.
On Monday, when Governor Cuomo asked his thoughts on the pressure on the MTA to deploy another 1,000 officers in the transit system amid calls for more mental health workers, the Democratic governor said he believes people have more public safety in the metro system needs. . “
“I believe you need better safety, public safety in the city in general. I believe you need better public safety in cities, writes overall,” he continued during a press conference.
Police are patrolling the A train with the train to Inwood, after NYPD deployed an additional 500 officers in the subway system following deadly attacks on Saturday, February 13, 2021 in New York. (AP Photo / Bebeto Matthews)
He refers to the city of Rochester in the state of New York, where recent video shows how a 9-year-old girl was pepper sprayed by the police. He also mentioned Buffalo – also abroad – where the police hit a ‘protester on the ground’, he said, referring to the incident in June 2020 in which the police are accused of being an elderly man during a demonstration to the pavement.
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“All I say to New York City is that you find out. You find out. You have community tension where they do not trust the police. You have tension in NYPD, where they feel they can not do their job, he said. “It’s going to work first before you reconcile your relationship, and it needs to be reconciled.”
An NYPD spokesman did not respond to Fox News’ requests for comment.
Fox News’s Danielle Wallace and The Associated Press contributed to this report.