The NYPD has announced that another 500 police officers will patrol New York City subway stations after four attacks in the past 24 hours resulted in two deaths.
“We are starting immediately with a surge of officers patrolling both above and below ground to ensure that everyone who rides on our transportation system daily is not only safe, but just as important, safe.” Dermot Shea, commissioner of the NYPD, said Saturday afternoon in a news conference.
“This boom will lead to an additional 500 officers, which is a significant increase in the staff of our transit office, and they will be deployed immediately by the city of New York.”
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Shortly before midnight on Friday, an adult man was pronounced dead after being stabbed in the neck and torso in the A train.
About two hours later in the early hours of Saturday morning, an unconscious 45-year-old woman with multiple stab wounds was transported to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead.
A 67-year-old man and a 43-year-old individual were also stabbed in the A-train in the past 24 hours, although it is not life-threatening.
NYPD chief of transportation Kathleen O’Reilly said Saturday that at least three of the incidents appeared to be connected and that the department was investigating whether all four of the knife pieces were committed by the same individual.
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The cuts that occurred Friday and Saturday morning come after a spate of seemingly haphazard attacks at NYC subway stations.
Despite a drastic decline in management due to the coronavirus pandemic, violent crimes such as assault, rape and murder increased by mid-November last year compared to 2019, according to the New York Times.
Despite the increase in crime, Mayor Bill de Blasio this week insisted that the metro ‘became safer and more secure’ compared to recent years.
“We have had an incredible and total disruption in 2020, our whole lives are being turned upside down, a global pandemic, a perfect storm,” de Blasio told a news conference on Tuesday.
“I am convinced that we can make sure that the metros are safe and that more and more people will return to the metros, and if our NYPD staff has to move more to the metros, we will absolutely do it.”
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NYC Transit Interim President Sarah Feinberg and TWU Local 100 President Tony Utano a joint statement issued Saturday condemned the “recent heinous attacks in the subway system.”
“We have called on the city to add more police officers to the system and to do more to assist those in need of mental health,” Feinberg and Utano said Saturday. “We demand that additional resources be put into the system to address this challenge immediately.”