New York’s subways aren’t safe. Three stranger-on-stranger homicides occurred during the first two months of the year, making a total of 34 killings in four years. Violent felony subway crime, overall, was 61 percent higher in January compared to January 2019, the start of New York’s last normal year. But Governor Kathy Hochul’s latest idea, deploying the National Guard on the platforms and trains, is no solution. The National Guard is a military force; it exists to respond to natural disasters and external threats, including terrorism. Subway crime and disorder are neither of these. They’re the predictable result of New York’s pullback over the past half-decade in incapacitating recidivist criminals. We don’t need to send in the troops. We just need to do what we did until 2019: keep anti-social and violent people off the subways.
