Why Public Safety Is the Key to Functioning NYC Subways — Crime Hot Spots for over 50 Years
New York has suffered 40 subway homicides since 2020, a five-fold increase compared to the post-millennial norm.
New York went through a similarly abrupt change in public safety underground before, in the mid-1960s — but took 25 years to fix it.
The fable of how New York achieved its miracle crime decline begins in 1990, with the stabbing death of 22-year-old Utah tourist Brian Watkins in a Midtown subway station, as he defended his parents from robbers.
Watkins’ killing shocked the city into cracking down on petty offenses — his killers had entered without paying their fares — before they escalated to violence.But Watkins’ killing wasn’t shocking.
His was the 18th subway murder of 1990, and eight more people would be killed through that December.
For decades, New York had normalized subway violence, which had stolen the lives of students and grandmothers, executives and waiters.
Decades before Brian Watkins, as I write in my book, “Movement,” there was Andrew Mormile — whose murder was shocking.
From 1904, when the subway began running, until the mid-1960s, New Yorkers had ridden without fear.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here. This piece is based on Nicole's forthcoming book on NYC transportation history, “Movement,” available for preorder.
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