President Trump is not the only elected leader to deploy National Guard troops in response to a supposed crime wave that many have questioned. In March 2024, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, announced that she would deploy 750 members of the National Guard to New York’s subway system.
It was a jarring sight to some New Yorkers who were not accustomed to seeing troops in military uniforms patrolling the subway with rifles.
There is an important difference between the situation in Washington, and the one in New York, however: Ms. Hochul, as New York’s governor, controls the state’s National Guard and can deploy it as she sees fit. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is sending the Guard into the streets of Washington against the wishes of the city’s leaders, just as he sent the National Guard to the streets of Los Angeles in June over objections from both the mayor and California’s governor.
In the subways, Ms. Hochul said the deployment worked. Crime in the subway declined 27 percent in the 12 months following the troops’ arrival, she said. This summer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority experienced its safest July on record, with an 8 percent drop in major felony crimes compared to July 2024, according to data from the governor’s office.
Others point to data that suggests the Guard deployment may have had little effect, since crime in the subway was already declining before Ms. Hochul’s announcement. The rates of rape, robbery, burglary and assault all spiked in early 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report by Vital City, an urban policy think tank. By the middle of 2020, transit crime started to retreat across nearly all categories.
That drop in subway crime has continued. It fell by another 2 percent in the first half of 2025, led by declines in harassment and misdemeanor assaults. One type of crime increased, however: felony assaults, which typically involve more serious injuries than misdemeanor assaults. There were 349 felony assaults reported in the subway in the first six months of 2025, a 7 percent increase over the same period last year, according to police data.
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The post New York’s Democratic Governor Called in the Troops Last Year to Fight Subway Crime appeared first on New York Times.
