Keeping New Yorkers Safe on the Subway
If you talk to anyone in New York City right now, subway safety concerns are bound to come up. Violence in our subways and stations has increased significantly over the last few months leaving New Yorkers shaken. So much so, my groupchat shares everyone’s location so that we all know that we’re safe as we travel on the subway every day.
So what’s the City doing about it?
To tackle this, Mayor Eric Adams released “The Subway Safety Plan” in February 2022. The plan includes investments in 3 main areas: people, places and policies.
The goal? To move homeless New Yorkers off the streets, provide them with mental health services and get them permanently housed. It’s not really a plan to fight crime directly, it’s a plan to tackle street homelessness. The idea is that violence and street homelessness are sometimes interconnected, so you have to handle one in order to tackle the other.
The parts of this plan that you can expect to see in action at subway stations across the City, if you haven’t already, include:
Homeless outreach teams - These teams work with NYPD to walk around subway stations helping get people in need of housing to shelter. They’re at Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, West 4th Street, W. 42nd St. Corridor, Fulton Street Corridor, and Jamaica Center.
End of the Line teams - At the end of each line everyone will be required to get off the train. On the A, E, 1, 2, N, R lines teams will be there to move people off the train and help them get into shelter settings.
Cross-Agency Teams - The teams are made up of an outreach worker, mental health professional and an officer. They engage with New Yorkers in subway cars to get them off the trains and onto the platform to provide care and offer them shelter. These teams have the power to order involuntary hospitalization of people who they think are dangerous to themselves.
More NYPD presence - Over 1,000 officers have been deployed to subway stations to enforce rules of conduct. The rules of conduct forbid sleeping, lying down, outstretching in a way that takes up more than one seat, littering, unruly behavior and lingering in a station for over an hour, exhibiting aggressive behavior, spitting, smoking, and using drugs.
B-HEARD (Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division) Teams - When you call 911 for a mental health emergency, these teams are activated to respond instead of police. B-HEARD teams are paramedics and mental health professionals that respond to 911 calls to deescalate emergency situations and provide immediate mental health care. They started as a pilot in a few areas in Harlem last year, and through this plan they will be expanded to 6 new precincts including Washington Heights, Inwood and South Bronx.
Want to know more? Read the full plan here.
