New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, announced a plan this week that could very well have been drafted by a Republican. On Wednesday, Hochul said, in the name of public safety, she’d be deploying 750 members of the National Guard plus some state and MTA police officers to do random bag checks at select subway stations.
“They can refuse,” Hochul said of planned searches in a news conference Wednesday. “We can refuse them. They can walk.”
MTA Chair Janno Lieber poured cold water on the idea that there needs to be a show of military force in the subways to make riders feel comfortable.
Spoken like someone who doesn’t live in New York City; spoken like a person who doesn’t understand what it means that around four million people take the subway every day and rely on it to get to work, school, doctor appointments, or simply to visit a different corner of this amazing city.
MTA Chair Janno Lieber poured cold water on the idea that there needs to be a show of military force in the subways to make riders feel comfortable.
“On average, last year, we had six felony crimes a day in a ridership of 4 million,” Lieber said at an MTA board meeting Wednesday. “I’m not going to argue about the statistics. I’m just saying that we need to push back on both the reality and the perception of crime.”
The governor has admitted that her extreme move to militarize the subways is really just about vibes. “We have seen a number of crimes, and again, not statistically significant, but psychologically significant,” Hochul told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough Thursday morning. “If you feel better walking past someone in a uniform to make sure that someone doesn’t bring a knife or a gun on the subway, then that’s exactly why I did it.”
The problem with a vibes-based police state — in addition to it not being based on facts — is that it plays directly into Republican narratives about blue cities run amok. It reinforces the idea that trampling our civil rights is OK if doing so creates the appearance of safety for people who haven’t been negatively impacted by systems of criminal justice and mass incarceration. For many New Yorkers, an increased uniformed presence creates a feeling opposite of safety.
Just last week Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., tweeted: “Hope @JoeBiden enjoyed going out for ice cream in NYC while the rest of the city is afraid of crime and migrants.” Spoken like someone who doesn’t live here here; spoken like someone who watches Fox News all day.
And Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who famously penned a widely panned 2020 New York Times op-ed urging then-President Donald Trump to flood the streets with troops to quell the protests following George Floyd’s murder, wryly weighed in on Hochul’s announcement. “Sending in the troops to help restore law and order…”
But who needs Republicans when our Democratic governor is giving credence to their benighted ideas about public safety?
Much of Hochul’s approach to crime feels like a trauma response to her too-close-for-comfort win over former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y.
Much of Hochul’s approach to crime feels like a trauma response to her too-close-for-comfort win over former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y. That race became almost entirely focused on crime and bail reform, even if the statistics didn’t back up the hysteria.
As I wrote here after the two debated in 2022, “Zeldin has managed to convince a worrying number of voters that the state is a crime-ridden hellscape with the help of local right-wing media feeding the idea that bail reform has flooded the streets with violent criminals.” Even though Hochul ended up winning with 53% of the vote, Zeldin’s crime policies won. “I’m also going to demonstrate that Democrats fight crime as well,” Hochul told Scarborough. “This narrative that Republicans have said and hijacked the story that we’re soft on crime, that we defund the police. No.” But for all the people who find comfort at the sight of a guy in a little hat strapped with a military rifle as they go through the turnstile to get home, there are the people who will undoubtedly be hurt by the increased police presence at subway stations. According to a June report about subway fare evasions, “Arrests and summonses for fare evasion have disproportionately fallen on Black and Latino New Yorkers, giving fuel to critics of the approach. During 2022, they accounted for 73% of people arrested and given a summons for fare evasion among all incidents in which race and ethnicity were reported by the police.” Though Hochul ended up winning with 53% of the vote, Zeldin’s crime policies won. What does Gov. Hochul think is going to happen now that stations are outfitted not just with a litter of NYPD cops, but with military personnel? While she has prioritized protecting the feelings of people who feel safe around law enforcement, she hasn’t considered protecting those whose lived experiences have proven they shouldn’t. The governor may think this security theater will make us feel safer, but the truth is the exact opposite: We don’t need more guns in the subway: even when — no, especially when — they’re being carried by soldiers.
Marisa Kabas
Marisa Kabas writes about politics, media and gender and their many intersections. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, HuffPost and The New Republic, and she writes a newsletter called The Handbasket. She is based in Brooklyn, New York. 
