New York City subway system to install security cameras in train cars

With subway ridership stubbornly stuck at about 60% of pre-pandemic levels, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would install two security cameras on every car to lure back people frightened of crime and bolster a system whose finances were teetering.
The surveillance program comes after many New Yorkers abandoned the subways when the coronavirus pandemic led to the lockdown of the city two years ago. As more people have found ways to navigate New York above ground, crime has become more common below.
Hochul said the cameras would bring scrutiny to places that have been the scene of random attacks, muggings and the focus of concerns about rising numbers of homeless people.
“You think Big Brother is watching you on the subway?” Hochul said at a news conference in a Queens subway yard. “You’re absolutely right. That is our intent: to get the message out that we’re going to be having surveillance of activity on the subway trains, and that’s going to give people great ease of mind.”
For Hochul, who is running for her first full term as governor in November, and Mayor Eric Adams, who won office promising a safer city, reviving the subway system — and coaxing back frightened riders — is an urgent issue. While the system’s nearly 500 stations have cameras, as do Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad commuter trains, the cars that move millions of New Yorkers each day are blind spots.

I’m at the @MTA Corona Maintenance Facility in Queens to make an announcement about enhancing safety on subways. Watch live: https://t.co/YxAdne9Fqm
— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) September 20, 2022
Expanding on a pilot program that began this summer, the transit authority would spend $5.5 million of state and federal funds to equip each of the more than 6,400 cars 2025, Hochul said. The new cameras, which will monitor entire cars and take about 40 hours per train to install, cannot be monitored live, Hochul said, but they will provide investigators with video footage after a crime.
The cameras are part of an effort to get people back on the subway. Their absence has threatened not only the fiscal welfare of New York’s transit system but that of the entire city.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency that relies heavily on farebox revenues to keep the system running, has forecast a $2.5 billion deficit in 2025. New York City, whose economy has been slow to recoup employment, tourism and tax revenue, itself faces a possible $10 billion deficit.
But even as Hochul and Adams have urged New Yorkers to leave their apartments and head for their workplaces again, continuous violence on the subway has complicated their message.
Five months ago, a gunman opened fire on an N train in Brooklyn, striking 10 people as more than a dozen others were injured. Six weeks later, a man fatally shot a passenger at random aboard a Q train.
And lower-profile offenses are an increasingly prevalent part of commuters’ daily experience. The number of crimes reported in the subway system is roughly the same through July of this year as it was in 2019, according to police statics. But because ridership is at about 60% of pre-pandemic levels, the per capita crime rate is up.

NEW: We will be installing security cameras in every single @NYCTSubway car.
My top priority is keeping New Yorkers safe. As we continue welcoming riders back to the subway, we’re enhancing safety and security.
— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) September 20, 2022
Only a fraction of reported crimes have resulted in arrests. Through July of this year, the Police Department counted about 2,800 complaints and about 600 arrests.
Bardia Gharib, a boxing coach who lives in Manhattan, said Tuesday in an interview on the 2 train headed uptown that he drives his son to school rather than letting him take public transit because of safety concerns.
“I don’t trust the system,” said Gharib, 51. “The people are dangerous.”
To make riders feel safer, transit authority officials have emphasised a push on summonses for “quality of life” offenses — public urination, smoking, alcohol consumption and stretching out over more than one seat.
At a meeting of the authority’s board this week, Chief Jason Wilcox, the head of the Police Department’s transit bureau, said summonses for such offenses were up nearly 160% this year — about 10,000 more tickets compared with last year.
“When you’re on a train car with somebody that’s drinking or smoking, you are directly affected,” Wilcox said. “We are very focused on this.”
Crime has intensified fears that were keeping workers from returning to their offices after the outbreak of the pandemic. In April, a survey the Partnership for New York City found that 53% of employers cited safety on the streets and subways as a reason workers did not want to return to offices, said Kathryn S. Wylde, the partnership’s CEO.
Hochul and Adams pledged to increase police presence, and in June, the transit authority launched its camera pilot program after a search for the Brooklyn shooting suspect was complicated a faulty security system in a station. Hochul said that the pilot program, which led to the installation of hidden cameras in more than 100 subway cars, had largely been a success.
She also touted the steps she had taken to improve public safety in the system, such as her joint efforts with Adams, a fellow Democrat, to require that trains and stations were patrolled more regularly.
Her Republican opponent in November, Rep. Lee Zeldin of Long Island, has made public safety the cornerstone of his campaign. His campaign launched a 30-second ad last week that featured a grim montage of street crime caught on video — including inside a subway car — and sought to link Hochul to violent crime in New York.
But in a follow-up survey last week the Partnership for New York City, fear of crime had declined to 24%, Wylde said.
“The expanded police presence really made a huge difference,” she said. “What people were looking for is that we’re serious about reclaiming the subways as safe territory.”
The added perception of safety, opponents said, comes at a cost. Privacy watchdogs criticised the camera plan for being politically motivated and expensive.
“It’s increasingly impossible to go anywhere without being tracked,” said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a civil rights and privacy group. “It’s one thing when we actually get something for trading away our privacy and our civil rights, but here it just seems like we’re wasting money, losing our privacy and getting nothing more than a PR stunt in exchange.”
Kalila Abdur-Razzaq, a university adminrative assant who was in the Times Square station Tuesday, said she was suspicious that the transit authority would use the cameras to protect its budget rather than its riders.
“I just don’t have a lot of faith that they’ll be used in a way that will help people taking the train,” said Abdur-Razzaq, 23. “They’re probably going to use it for crimes that affect the MTA financially, not crimes that affect riders.”
But Zaire Maignan, 30, a shoe salesperson at a Nordstrom in Manhattan riding uptown, said that the cameras could virtually enhance police officers’ reach.
“Adding cameras is going to make people feel more secure, more safe,” Maignan said. “Especially on a train where there’s no control.”
(Written Ana Ley)