New York Governor Kathy Hochul unfurled a subway “security” plan final week. It included assigning 750 Nationwide Guard and 250 state police and Metropolitan Transit Authority officers to the subway—along with the 1,000 NYPD officers the mayor added in February—to examine riders’ baggage. The governor insisted that her plan is designed to guard New Yorkers and hold them driving the trains. “My No. 1 precedence is the protection of all New Yorkers,” she mentioned. “Downstate,” she mentioned, “doesn’t perform with no wholesome subway system that folks believe in—I’ve to do that for them.”
As a lifelong subway rider right here in “downstate,” I can inform from her plan that the governor has solely a restricted understanding of what we’d like in the best way of “a wholesome subway system.” I immigrated to town in 1994 at age 7, and have been taking the subway—largely by myself from the very starting—within the three a long time since. I rode by means of the late Nineteen Nineties, when the transit system noticed an all-time excessive in recorded crimes; into 2020, when ridership dropped; and thru 2021, when anti-Asian assaults rose. The governor’s plan does dedicate $20 million for 10 groups of mental-health staff, which could possibly be useful (assuming these groups actually do get weak New Yorkers much-needed sources). However the remainder of the plan doesn’t appear to ponder how the subway system works in observe. How do bag checks forestall folks from carrying weapons of their pockets or below their garments? How does one effectively administer truthful checks in a system that sees 3 million riders a day, and numerous congested stations throughout rush hour? How can law-enforcement omnipresence in high-traffic stations in high-income areas supply something to far-flung, low-traffic stations, which rating worst on security and harassment?
And the plan misapprehends what makes riders really feel protected: not cops or troopers, however fellow riders. Ask any New Yorker what they love concerning the subway—and what makes them really feel most secure down in these busy tunnels—and they’ll say the group of their fellow riders. The kindness of the brisk good Samaritans who cease simply lengthy sufficient to hold baggage up the steps with no phrase; the infectious power of dancers who carry showtime to vehicles and platforms throughout town; the laughter exchanged after sharing a really New York second of dodging a subway rat. Nowhere on this checklist is the presence of nationwide militia and state legislation enforcement—no, that may be a burden, not a perk; we journey the subway despite, not due to, such options.
As for the purported lack of security, it’s unclear whether or not that’s actual. Mayor Eric Adams mentioned on social media the exact same day the governor introduced her new plan that transit crime final month was down 15 % in contrast with the identical month final 12 months (homicide, shootings, and automotive thefts are additionally down). He declared that “the most secure massive metropolis in America simply bought even safer.” The governor’s intervention in our metropolis’s lifeblood is probably an unsurprising political transfer in an essential election 12 months. However at what value? Each automotive and platform holds New Yorkers who may benefit from no more policing however extra public companies—that’s, extra funding for the general public libraries, for which the finances was slashed so tremendously that each one Sunday hours had been eradicated, and for which the mayor simply this week proposed additional cuts that will additionally eradicate Saturday hours; for emergency mental-health-personnel coaching applications, the finances for one in every of which was not too long ago lowered by $12 million; and certainly, for the subway itself, a public good that belongs to all New Yorkers no matter race, earnings, or standing, and that faces its personal budgetary threats.
In 2020, when white-collar New Yorkers had the privilege of abstaining from the subway, their poorer, extra marginalized counterparts continued to take the prepare as a result of that they had no different selection. These are the very people whom the governor’s plan may deter from driving the subway: Folks of coloration, as an example, are way more prone to be stopped by legislation enforcement, to be criminalized and institutionalized. The governor’s plan compounds present structural limitations to fairness and justice.
After which, in fact, there are the undocumented New Yorkers, of whom I was one. Once I was rising up within the ’90s, driving the subway to the general public faculty the place I used to be fed the free lunch that stood between me and hunger, my largest concern was seeing cops within the subway.
I nonetheless keep in mind the primary time a cop stepped into my automotive once I was on the F prepare, heading from East Broadway to the tenement-style residence my mother and father and I shared with different immigrant households in Brooklyn. I used to be in a packed rush-hour automotive; there was scarcely flooring area for the shuffle of ft as passengers bought on and off. My mom was with me that day, and once I noticed the uniformed officer embark, I grabbed her hand with out turning to take a look at her. I listened to the blood speeding in my ears in the course of the lengthy minutes because the prepare descended decrease within the tunnels, below the East River, after which rose once more on the opposite aspect, the place, at York Road, the doorways pinged open. The officer stepped out.
It was then that I regained my senses, and realized with a begin that my mom was not the truth is the place I believed she had been. After which, a beat later, I spotted that the hand I had been holding was not hers. I nonetheless keep in mind wanting down on the hand and tracing it as much as its wrist, elbow, and shoulder, earlier than lastly arriving on the face of its proprietor: a girl I didn’t know, whom I’d by no means seen earlier than and haven’t seen since, however who gave me the warmest smile.
That smile made me really feel protected. In a metropolis with restricted area for a poor, hungry, undocumented child, the subway turned one in every of my few havens. The subway stored me fed and educated. The subway is the place I first learn a few of my very favourite library books, instructing myself English one phrase at a time; it’s the place I wrote the primary draft of my childhood memoir, tracing and therapeutic my deepest wounds; and it’s the place I first began to know what residence may really feel like in America. Once I learn the information final week, a kaleidoscope of subway reminiscences performed in my thoughts, and I questioned how I’d react to the information if I had been nonetheless undocumented, nonetheless residing in poverty and concern.
The governor emphasised that she isn’t forcing anybody to endure bag checks. Those that refuse to undergo a examine can “go residence,” she mentioned: “You’ll be able to say no. However you’re not taking the subway.” The place, I ask, does that go away the numerous New Yorkers for whom the subway is the one means residence?
