Gov. Kathy Hochul said Wednesday that this summer was the safest in the New York City subway in at least 15 years, even as federal officials have painted the transit system as dangerous and crime-ridden.
While the latest statistics were promising, the event underscored how sensitive a political issue subway safety remains for the state, amid intensifying criticism from the White House.
Overall, there were 480 major crimes recorded in the subway from June to August, a 9 percent drop compared with the same period last year and the fewest number of such incidents since at least 2009, the governor’s office said. Major crimes include robbery, burglary, grand larceny, assault, murder and rape.
In August, felony assault — a class of violent crime that the Trump administration has frequently pointed to as evidence of lawlessness underground — fell to 31 incidents from 52 the same month last year, a 40 percent drop.
But the governor stopped short of calling the reduction a full success.
Referring apparently to a number of shocking crimes, including the immolation of a woman in a subway car in December, Ms. Hochul hedged.
“There will still be another headline that sends chills down people’s spines and creates that sense of — as much as, statistically, there is a very low percentage chance of something happening — you still worry about loved ones,” she said.
As of the latest police data, less than 2 percent of all crime in New York City occurs in the subway, said Michael Kemper, the agency’s chief of security. The subway system, the largest in the country, carries roughly 4 million riders a day.
At Grand Central Station, surrounded by police officers and M.T.A. officials, Governor Hochul credited the decline to a number of safety measures in recent years, which she called “cops, cameras and care.”
The effort involved a $77 million state investment in January to put two police officers on every overnight subway train. Other moves included the installation of brighter LED lights in stations — a process that could be completed for every station by the end of the year — and the addition of thousands of cameras across the system and teams of clinicians who seek out people with mental health issues underground.
Ms. Hochul said the overnight police patrols will continue, but did not say for how long, or if the state would secure more funds to cover the cost.
Her push for more safety in the subway system has paid off, said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the M.T.A., a watchdog group. “The critical investments in police, in social services and in infrastructure combine to make a real difference in the day-to-day lives of subway riders,” she said.
But a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation said that the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, has heard from law enforcement officers and transit workers who say they feel unsupported and unsafe on the M.T.A.’s subways and buses.
“New York officials and M.T.A.’s boasting is shameful,” the spokesman, Nathaniel Sizemore, said. “President Trump and Secretary Duffy will continue to stand up for the working-class Americans who just want to be safe when they ride a subway or bus,” he said.
In response to a question about what the White House might say about the latest statistics, Ms. Hochul sent a message to the transportation secretary.
“Tell Sean Duffy, we’ve got this.”
The Trump administration has singled out a number of left-leaning cities in recent months for what it termed a rise in violent crime.
The rhetoric has put Ms. Hochul and the M.T.A. in “in a tough position,” because there is some truth to the criticism, said Elizabeth Glazer, the founder of Vital City, a civic think tank.
Even though crime underground remains rare, “the subways are just a more violent place than they used to be,” Ms. Glazer said, and there’s been a shift in the nature of crimes committed there.
In 2023, for the first time in nearly two decades, the number of felony assaults in the subway system was greater than the number of robberies, she said.
In August, after making exaggerated and false claims about violent crime in Washington, D.C., President Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops to the district.
Governor Hochul, who last year ordered 1,000 National Guard to patrol the subways to ease concerns about a number of violent incidents underground, has said her decision differs from the president’s deployment, which led to guardsmen carrying long guns and arresting people. The guardsmen in the subway are armed but are often barred from carrying long guns like rifles.
Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, a grass-roots group of transit riders, said that millions of people safely ride the subway every day. “The few high-profile incidents that do occur show that taking care of New Yorkers in need by investing in housing and health services can improve safety even further,” he said.
Criticism from the White House regarding crime in the subway coincided with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s fight to end congestion pricing, New York City’s first-in-the-nation tolling program that President Trump has vowed to kill. A federal court judge is expected soon to decide whether the program, which charges most drivers $9 to enter the busiest parts of Manhattan, can proceed without federal interference.
Governor Hochul’s praise for the reduction in crime on the subway comes after a number of major delays frustrated commuters this year.
In the first half of 2025, there were 385 “major incidents” — events that delayed 50 or more trains — 17 more than the same period the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday by the state comptroller’s office. The report did not include more recent delays this summer, which some critics compared to the so-called Summer of Hell in 2017, when widespread service issues were rampant.
Stefanos Chen is a Times reporter covering New York City’s transit system.
Winnie Hu is a Times reporter covering the people and neighborhoods of New York City.
The post The Subway Had Its Safest Summer in Years. The White House Shrugged. appeared first on New York Times.
