City Council neglects real safety issue by focusing on subway-surfing hot air

The increase in subway crime in the last five years has left New Yorkers feeling uneasy.

This year, assaults have risen by 56% compared to 2019, and after many years where underground murders were at most one or two a year, we have already had 10 in 2024 — double the number from 2023.

It was reassuring to hear on Monday that the City Council was going to hold a special hearing to address subway safety issues.

However, the hearing wasn’t about the widespread crime, but about a type of subway injury that is entirely avoidable — because it’s completely self-inflicted.

“Subway surfing” is a trend where passengers, mainly adolescents, climb on top of subway cars on elevated lines and “surf” them, balancing on trains that can reach speeds of 50 miles per hour.

This very dangerous activity has resulted in six kids dying this year alone, with seven others badly injured.

Subway surfing is clearly no laughing matter. In early November, a girl fell off a 2 train in Harlem and lost an arm and a leg.

The gruesome images of her arm on top of a traffic signal should serve as a warning to any potential imitators that this game is a terrible idea.

In response, the MTA, schools, the Department of Youth and Community Development, and the NYPD have taken extensive measures with subway ads, a social media campaign, and in-school messaging to spread awareness.

The police are using drones to identify subway surfers in real-time and have arrested 181 of these reckless daredevils so far this year.

However, the City Council chose to showcase, complain, and grouse about how New Yorkers are failing their youth.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams expressed his “concern about the increased arrests of young people,” particularly the “increased use of surveillance technology, especially considering the NYPD’s concerning history of surveilling New Yorkers.”

“I often ask myself, would I listen to me as a young person?” Williams pondered during his testimony. “I’m not sure I have the full answer to that.”

He wrapped up his remarks with a predictable call to “expand resources for youth, including mental health treatment and safe, engaging after-school programs.”

Council Member Althea Stevens continued this line of questioning. “Why are young people engaging in this and not participating in our programs? Are our programs not engaging enough?” she worried.

“We have a duty to address the root causes . . . including lack of engagement in activities.”

The leftist emphasis on “programs” and “activities” underscores their real aim of increased social spending — the constant progressive response to every issue.

New York City offers 900 after-school programs, all free or almost free, in addition to dozens of sports teams and clubs, and spends billions of dollars on maintaining parks, playgrounds, pools, and recreation centers so kids have better things to do than play in traffic or balance on trains.

Nevertheless, we have fallen short in our “responsibility” to “engage” our youth.

Subway surfing is a concern, and kids who partake in it should probably meet the girl who lost two limbs falling off a train to scare them straight.

But what’s truly revealing is that the City Council rushed to schedule a hearing on this issue — which it can’t do much about — while ignoring the rampant crime in the subway system, a problem within its jurisdiction.

During a public safety budget hearing in March 2024 — one of the rare council meetings that touched on transit crime — Williams claimed that crime in the subway was caused by the presence of the police.

Council Member Lincoln Restler criticized the NYPD for “sweeping up” non-whites in “mass arrest” operations.

And Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark asserted, without evidence, that “the lack of resources for youth and mental health are driving violence, subway crime, and retail theft.”

The harsh reality about subway crime is that the city knows how to reduce it, because we have done it before.

Proactive policing would stop farebeaters caught entering the system — a proven method for finding and seizing illegal guns, or at least persuading people to leave their guns at home.

More police officers on platforms and trains keep criminals out of the system.

And strict enforcement of Kendra’s Law would compel seriously mentally ill individuals living in the subway system to receive the necessary treatment they need.

It’s one thing to demand a solution to the issue of teens endangering themselves by climbing over moving trains.

It’s a completely different matter to address the gang members, lunatics, and threats who have turned New York’s subways into their playgrounds.

Seth Barron’s next book “Weaponized” will be released in 2025.