The millions of people who crowd into New York City’s busiest subway stations every day have recently encountered a sight reminiscent of a frightening, bygone era: National Guard troops with long guns patrolling platforms and checking bags.
After 9/11 and at moments of high alert in the years since, New York deployed soldiers in the subway to deter would-be terrorists and reassure the public that the transit system was safe from attack. The National Guard is now there for a different reason. Earlier this week, Governor Kathy Hochul sent 1,000 state police officers and National Guard troops into the city’s underground labyrinth not to scour for bombs but to combat far more ordinary crime—a recent spate of assaults, thefts, and stabbings, including against transit workers.
The order, which Hochul issued independently of the city’s mayor, Eric Adams, prompted immediate criticism. Progressives accused her of militarizing the subways and validating Republican exaggerations about a spike in crime, potentially making people even more fearful of using public transit. Law-enforcement advocates, a group that typically supports a robust show of force, didn’t like the idea either.
“I would describe it as the equivalent of putting a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage,” William Bratton, who led the police departments of New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, told me. “It will actually do nothing to stop the flow of blood, because it’s not going to the source of where the blood is coming from.”
Read more at Msn.com
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