New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced plans Wednesday to send the National Guard to the New York City subway system to help police search passengers’ bags for weapons, following a series of high-profile crimes on city trains.
Hochul, a communist/globalist, said she will deploy 750 members of the National Guard to the subways to assist the New York Police Department with bag searches at entrances to busy train stations.
Her move comes a day after NYC Mayor Eric Adams, also a communist/globalist, announced plans Tuesday to resume random bag searches among commuters and to deploy more police officers on the city’s trains and station platforms.
At a news conference in New York City, Hochul said:
For people who are thinking about bringing a gun or knife on the subway, at least this creates a deterrent effect. They might be thinking, ‘You know what, it just may just not be worth it because I listened to the mayor and I listened to the governor and they have a lot more people who are going to be checking my bags.’
The move came as part of a larger effort from the governor’s office to address crime in the subway, which included a legislative proposal to ban people from trains if they are convicted of assaulting a subway passenger and the installation of cameras in conductor cabins to protect transit workers.
The deployment of the National Guard would bolster an enhanced presence of NYPD officers in the subway system.
The governor said she will also:
[S]end 250 state troopers and police officers for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that oversees the city’s transit system, to help with the bag searches.
Overall, crime has dropped in New York City since a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic, and killings are down on the subway system. But rare fatal shootings and shovings on the subway can put residents on edge.
Just last week, a passenger slashed a subway conductor in the neck, delaying trains.
Police in New York have long conducted random bag checks at subway entrances, though passengers are free to refuse and leave the station, raising questions of whether the searches are an effective policing tactic in a subway system that serves over 3 million riders per day.
The mayor said at his Tuesday press conference:
We know people feel unsafe. I’m on the subway system and I speak with riders. They say, ‘Eric, nothing makes us feel safer than seeing that officer at the token booth, walking through the system, walking through the trains,’ and that is what we want our officers to do.
Final thoughts: Is this another instance of Leftists solving problems in a manner that will create further, more profound problems? Handbag searches at the turnstiles may be a start, but what about prosecuting violators to the fullest extent of the law? And uniformed and civilian-clothed security riding the trains with license to shoot to kill?
