Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Edgar Sandoval

The subway has come a long way since the dark days of the 1980s and 1990s when violence was rampant and riders felt constant dread. The system has become very safe, with just one murder on the subway last year compared with 26 in 1990.

But lately, riders are starting to feel less safe on the subway, a belief that is often reinforced by a flood of complaints about the transit system, doled out in real time on social media.

The shooting in Queens on Sunday was captured on Twitter in a graphic video showing a struggle between several men who had stepped out of a southbound 7 train at the 90th Street-Elmhurst Avenue station around 12:45 p.m.

At one point in the video, gunshots can be heard off-screen. Police said the two suspects in the shooting had fled on foot. On Monday, police arrested a 26-year-old man whom they identified as a member of MS-13, a violent street gang with roots in El Salvador, in connection with the killing.

“Violent incidents like the one today will not be tolerated on our trains, or anywhere in New York City,” said Phil Walzak, a police spokesman. “The subway system remains incredibly safe, with approximately one crime for every million riders per day.”

But data shows crime is heading in the wrong direction. Transit crimes were up 3.8 percent last year, according to police, part of a slight rise since 2014. Still, there were only about 2,500 major crimes — including murders, rapes and robberies — in the system last year, or about seven per day, compared with nearly 17,500 transit crimes in 1990.

Back then, people were afraid to ride the train and often avoided doing so late at night. Some stayed away from the subway altogether. The stabbing of a tourist on the subway in 1990 as he defended his mother during a robbery crystallized fears about crime.

Recent concerns about safety have caused subway riders to once again change their behavior. Some do not take the train after a certain hour or allow children and visiting relatives to travel alone. Others switch cars to avoid menacing passengers.

Ana Smith, 62, of Brooklyn, said she does not let her 10-year-old grandson ride the subway alone.

“I have to be with him,” she said as they waited at a station in Brooklyn on a recent morning. “I have to protect him. It’s too dangerous. We have too much crime in this train station.”

Police insist that the subway is safe and that a few notable incidents captured on social media have skewed perceptions that it is not. Transit Police Chief Edward Delatorre said the rise in transit crimes last year was mainly driven by thefts in Manhattan.

Delatorre said in an interview that the number of crimes in the subway is so small, that “one or two recidivist offenders can enter the system and throw the crime numbers out of whack.” Still, he said he was adding more officers to the system as part of a new policing model under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The subway’s leader, Andy Byford, said in a statement: “I want people to know that despite this beyond-horrifying incident which is under active investigation, the subway is remarkably safe, both generally as a public space as well as relative to other modes of transport such as driving.”

Subway ridership has exploded over the last quarter century, making it all the more notable that crime has remained low on the system. There were about 1 billion annual subway trips in 1990, compared with 1.7 billion trips in 2017.

But the city’s former police commissioner, William J. Bratton, suggested on Twitter recently that disorder on the subway could signal a return to the conditions that led to soaring crime. On Christmas Day, he posted a video of the officer fighting off the men and said it was a reminder that the city’s descent into violence had begun in the subways.

“The quality-of-life declines and warning signs are all there for it to happen once again,” he said.

In the 1980s, muggings and violent crime were rife on the subway. The fear was so universal that Bernard Goetz was applauded by some for shooting four teenagers on a train in 1984 after believing he was being robbed. The 1990 killing of the tourist from Utah, Brian Watkins, was particularly jarring: Watkins was stabbed in the chest after several young men slashed his father’s pants pocket and hit his mother. The incident represented a breaking point for the city that led to an aggressive police crackdown.

In 1982, a transit officer described sensing “a big sigh of relief” from passengers when he would step on to a train.

“You can actually hear it,” he told The Times. “People smile at me. They’re relieved.”

Subway riders today are perhaps most concerned about poor service and constant delays. Subway leaders are also worried about a rise in fare evasion — a problem they say drains more than $200 million in revenue from the system each year.

But New Yorkers are increasingly worried about crime, too. In January, four men attacked an 18-year-old woman at a station in the Bronx, punching her and stealing her headphones.

Ivan Cruz, 20, an architecture student at New York City College of Technology, said he was often harassed on the subway.

“I always try to stick around a group of people to feel safer,” Cruz said at the Jay Street-MetroTech station, a busy hub in Brooklyn, on a recent afternoon.

Cruz said he was recently approached by an intoxicated passenger and later by a group of teenagers who bullied him. He worries that someone could try to push him, so he avoids the station at night.

“I only see a few officers patrolling here,” he said. “I’d feel safer with more.”

The only subway murder last year took place at the Jay Street station, when a 65-year-old man died after a teenager punched him on the platform and knocked him onto the tracks. Bystanders, who reported that the teen was ranting incoherently, helped the man back onto the platform, but he went into cardiac arrest and died.

New Yorkers regularly encounter agitated people on the subway who yell and threaten other passengers. The city is struggling to cope with a growing homeless population, many of whom have mental health issues. Some of those people end up in the subway.

Delatorre said he does not believe there are more outbursts by people with mental health problems on the subway than in the past.

“I believe it’s more noticeable,” he said. “The Wi-Fi is stronger and now anytime anything happens, it’s blasted out right away.”

The challenge of policing the subway was highlighted by an altercation in January when transit officers asked two men to leave an entrance after riders complained they were smoking. The men had been arrested at the same station in December for attacking officers.

The officers, who were caught on video pummeling the men with their batons, are being investigated for using excessive force. Charges were dropped against one of the men — a move that prompted a rare rebuke from James P. O’Neill, the city’s police commissioner. The decision had put the safety of officers and the public in jeopardy, O’Neill said on Twitter.

Police say the recent uptick in crime was due in part to several international pickpocket rings. Under de Blasio, police are using a new approach, known as the neighborhood policing model, on the subway.

Delatorre said he is posting more officers on parts of the subway to develop relationships with workers and riders.

“The feedback we’re getting is positive,” he said. “They’re seeing more officers on platforms and on the trains.”

Cece Colon, a retired legal secretary, fled an F train recently when a confrontation erupted between two women.

“It was too much — I got off and got on another train,” Colon said while waiting at the Jay Street station.

Colon said she avoids carrying expensive items on the subway.

“Nothing in my purse is valuable,'’ she said. “I feel more liberated.'’

Lora Hinds, 47, an MTA dispatcher, said she avoids wearing jewelry.

“I try not to travel at night if I don’t have to,” she said.

The Second Avenue station on the F line in Manhattan has become well known for a group of men who harass riders. On a recent afternoon, about eight men sat on the platform drinking and smoking. A high school student said the men yelled racist things at her.

Now her boyfriend accompanies her on the subway to make sure she is safe.

“When we are together, they don’t bother us,” the teenager said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/nyregion/nyc-subway-crime.html" id="ea53032b-0fcd-38ae-a634-e5b9bca12c28">The New York Times</a>.

New York Tackled Subway Crime. But Is It Starting to Come Back?

NEW YORK — In January, a sleeping rider was stabbed in the head with a screwdriver on New York City’s subway. A month before that, a police officer fended off five homeless men who attacked him on a train platform. And on Sunday afternoon, a man was fatally shot at a subway station in Queens, the first murder on the system in more than a year.

On Monday, police arrested a 26-year-old man whom they identified as a member of MS-13, a violent street gang with roots in El Salvador, in connection with the killing.

Data shows crime is heading in the wrong direction. Transit crimes were up 3.8 percent last year, according to police, part of a slight rise since 2014. Still, there were only about 2,500 major crimes — including murders, rapes and robberies — in the system last year, or about seven per day, compared with nearly 17,500 transit crimes in 1990.

Delatorre said he is posting more officers on parts of the subway to develop relationships with Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers and riders.

Police say the recent uptick in crime was due in part to several international pickpocket rings. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, police are using a new approach, known as the neighborhood policing model, on the subway.

At one point in the video, gunshots can be heard off-screen. Police said the two suspects in the shooting had fled on foot.

Delatorre said he is posting more officers on parts of the subway to develop relationships with MTA workers and riders.

All of them broke the law: They sneaked into the subway without paying.

While there have always been riders who try to avoid paying, the practice has become so widespread in New York City that it is costing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority about $215 million in lost revenue this year, prompting subway officials to announce a crackdown.

Fare evasion has nearly doubled — from 1.8 percent of riders in recent years to 3.2 percent this year, contributing to the agency’s worsening finances, which could lead to fare increases or service cuts.

But it has not been clear exactly why fare evasion is up. New Yorkers, it turns out, have many reasons for not paying.

“I don’t feel like going all the way there to put money on my card,” Aicha Makanera, 18, of Brooklyn, said one recent morning as she walked in through an open emergency exit gate at the busy Times Square station, where The New York Times assigned a reporter to monitor fare beating at one series of turnstiles.

The nearest MetroCard vending machine was a block away.

“Sometimes it’s easier to use the door,” she said. “I don’t feel bad.”

During one hour that morning, someone entered through the emergency exit every minute, on average. Some were caught by police and received a summons with a $100 fine.

Jamar Hester’s MetroCard was not working, so he followed other commuters through the exit gate. He got caught.

“I saw somebody else go through the gates so I walked right through there, too,” said Hester, 26, who recently moved to New York from the suburbs of Washington.

Transit systems across the world deal with fare evasion. But there is a growing sense that New Yorkers are feeling more emboldened to skip paying because the trains have become so unreliable. The subway fell into crisis last year and continues to be plagued by delays. And yet the fare could rise again in March.

The aggressive enforcement of fare evasion has also drawn criticism nationally over concerns that arrests target black and Hispanic riders.

When the Washington City Council recently approved lighter penalties for fare evasion, over protests from the city’s transit agency, one councilman said: “I’m sad that Metro’s losing money, but I’m more sad about what’s happening to black people.”

In New York, fare evasion was widespread in the early 1990s, when William J. Bratton, then the transit police chief, said it was “very, very pervasive, particularly in some of the poorer neighborhoods of the city.” Police cracked down on it as part of their “broken windows” strategy, believing it would help curb more serious offenses.

The MTA, which oversees New York City’s subways and buses, released a report this month saying that about 208,000 people take the subway each day without paying. Using an emergency exit to avoid paying the fare has quadrupled since 2011, officials said.

The situation is even worse on buses: Nearly 350,000 people take the bus each day without paying, or about 16 percent of bus riders.

“Just like paying for goods in a store, paying the fare is not just a suggestion,” said Shams Tarek, a spokesman for the MTA. “Fare evasion is unfair to the vast majority of customers who do pay, and denies the MTA critical funds needed to improve the system.”

The agency’s eight-page report was quickly criticized by prosecutors and transit advocates for blaming poor New Yorkers for the agency’s mounting problems and for not providing more details about how the agency calculated the figures.

But the MTA’s acting chairman, Fernando Ferrer, said at a recent board meeting that riders could see the problem firsthand.

“You cannot deny the evidence of your own eyes,” he said after the meeting. “You see this all the time. This is a growing problem. It’s worrisome and it’s having a financial impact.”

A recent video on the news site Gothamist showed MTA footage of a parade of riders brazenly jumping and crawling under turnstiles with varying degrees of finesse.

The head of the subways, Andy Byford, suggested surveying New Yorkers to find out why they ride without paying.

“Is it some sort of protest vote?” he wondered. “Is it because you can’t afford it? Is it because you fundamentally disagree that you should pay for transit in the first place? Is it more of an opportunist thing — you didn’t set out that day to evade the fare, but because the gate happened to be open, you followed a bunch of people through?”

The rate of fare evasion on transit systems of similar size was typically between 1 percent and 7 percent, subway officials said, putting New York City’s current rate of 3.2 percent near the middle.

Last year, the Manhattan district attorney’s office decided to stop prosecuting most people arrested in fare evasion incidents, a policy change that transit officials say has contributed to the increase.

Another factor: Subway emergency exit gates used to have loud sirens, but they were silenced in 2014. This seems to have led more people to leave via the exit gates, providing more chances for fare beaters to sneak in.

There are also fewer station agents — about 2,500 down from 3,500 in 1995 — now that vending machines handle most MetroCard purchases.

Getting caught jumping the turnstile can still have serious consequences for poor New Yorkers. Even if they are not arrested, they can receive a civil summons that carries a $100 fine. Or if someone lacks valid identification or has a history of similar arrests, they can be booked on a “theft of services” charge, a misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail.

At the Times Square station the other day, a fashion student was left in tears after a police officer gave her a summons on her way to class.

“I’ve never done this before,” she said, declining to give her name. “I said I would go back and put in the money. He said, ‘No, what’s done is done.'”

A commuter who gave her name only as Janet was also unhappy after receiving a summons. She said she was late for work and it seemed easier to use the emergency exit.

“I wish they were as vigilant when it came to fixing all the issues they have, like delays,” she said. “They ruined my mood, but I did it. I won’t do it again.”

During the evening rush hour, a stream of riders entered through the emergency exit. At least 61 people were spotted in an hour. A 42-year-old Brooklyn woman scolded her daughters, aged 12 and 13, for sliding under the turnstile. “Don’t do that!” she said in Spanish.

“They were just acting silly,” said the woman, who also declined to give her name. “I’m trying to lead by example. They usually don’t do that.”

That morning, so many people had entered through the emergency exit that one woman trying to leave was blocked by three entering commuters in a row. Eventually, she raised her hands in frustration and left through a turnstile.

Keon Malon, 22, of Brooklyn, said he received a summons for opening the emergency exit for a woman with a suitcase, even though he paid his fare. He plans to appeal the fine.

“They have nothing better else to do,” he said. “Next time I’m not opening the door to no one. It’s not worth it.”

At the customer service booth, a woman complained that she had purchased a $10 MetroCard but it showed only a $3.75 balance. An MTA employee told her she had to mail in the card for a refund and instructed her to enter through the exit gate.

“See? This is why people do it,” she said, fuming. “But I’m only going here because she told me I could. It’s a mess.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/nyregion/subway-fare-evasion.html" id="cf8651d7-d972-328e-a1f9-16d27a4a9647">The New York Times</a>.

How Rampant Is Fare Evasion? At Times Square, One Rider a Minute Sneaks In

NEW YORK — One woman was late to work. Another was rushing to class. A man who just moved to New York had trouble swiping his MetroCard.

The agency’s eight-page report was quickly criticized by prosecutors and transit advocates for blaming poor New Yorkers for the agency’s mounting problems and for not providing more details about how the agency calculated the figures. But the MTA’s acting chairman, Fernando Ferrer, said at a recent board meeting that riders could see the problem firsthand.

Last year, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office decided to stop prosecuting most people arrested in fare evasion incidents, a policy change that transit officials say has contributed to the increase.

The eight-page report was quickly criticized by prosecutors and transit advocates for blaming poor New Yorkers for the agency’s mounting problems and for not providing more details about how the agency calculated the figures. But the authority’s acting chairman, Fernando Ferrer, said at a recent board meeting that riders could see the problem firsthand.

How Rampant Is Fare Evasion? At Times Square, One Rider a Minute Sneaks In.

At the next stop, an older woman with a cane climbed on and gave the driver a hearty wave. She, too, did not pay. Again the driver pressed F5.

Over 2 1/2 hours, the driver pressed F5 — the button that records fare evaders — at least 50 times, and there was still a half-hour left on his morning route.

“It’s getting worse,” said the driver, Luis, who declined to provide his full name because he did not have permission to discuss his job. “How many? On my bus, hundreds a day. Hundreds with an ‘s.’”

Transit officials recently announced a remarkable figure: 1 in 5 bus riders in New York City does not pay the fare. The statistic stunned even Andy Byford, the leader of the subway and bus system, who said it was “wholly unacceptable” and at least double the rate of other cities across the world.

“We look at what other transit authorities are suffering, and this now really stands out as an outlier,” Byford said.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that oversees the subway and buses, says fare evasion is on the rise on the subway and buses, costing the system $225 million in lost revenue last year. But the problem is far worse on buses, where nearly 22 percent of riders do not pay, compared with 3.4 percent of subway riders.

An informal survey on several routes found that fare evasion was widespread and the reasons varied. Riders did not have exact change. They knew they would not get in trouble. And some simply felt no obligation to pay for a transit system plagued by unreliable service and constant fare increases.

On a recent morning, a man and two children boarded a BX19 bus in the Bronx through the back door without paying the $2.75 fare. Standing across the street, Charisma Howard said she sometimes skipped the fare, too, and did not feel bad about it.

“There have been times when I’m fiddling with my purse or carrying my children, and I walk past the driver,” she said. “Do I feel guilty? No, I don’t feel guilty. The service is so bad on the buses, the train, everything. A lot of people feel the same way.”

On the Q65 bus in Queens, Jose Castillo, the construction worker, confessed that he could not afford the fare. “OK, listen,” he told the driver. “I don’t have any money. I’m just trying to get to work.”

The bus driver shrugged. There was nothing he could really do. A confrontation with a rider could hold up the bus — or, worse, lead to violence.

Cities across the world are grappling with fare evasion, though it is far worse in New York. In Paris, the fare evasion rate for buses is 11 percent, while in Toronto it is 5 percent, according to the local transit agencies. The Paris transit system has 1,200 staff members dedicated to the problem and hands out about 1 million fines each year.

In London, where riders face fines as high as $1,300, the fare evasion rate on buses is only 1.5 percent. But in Washington, where about 14 percent of bus riders do not pay, the D.C. Council recently went in the other direction, approving lighter penalties because of concerns about targeting low-income riders.

In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who controls the transportation authority, has pressed transit leaders to tackle fare evasion as part of his plans to address the system’s financial crisis. On the subway, loud alarms were installed at some emergency exits to dissuade riders who use them to sneak inside. New signs warn: “Fare Evasion Will Cost You.”

On city buses, which carry more than 2 million people each day, Byford suggested sending police officers onboard to enforce the rules.

“The big thing we’re missing is we need cops on buses,” Byford said at a recent transit board meeting.

But his comments drew an immediate backlash from critics, who said the move would “exacerbate the over-policing of communities of color.” Fare evasion arrests have disproportionally targeted black and Hispanic men.

Byford later clarified that he did want to see more arrests, but that the presence of officers would discourage riders from breaking the rules. “I’d love it if no one actually got caught,” Byford said.

The authority’s new chairman, Patrick J. Foye, said he also did not want to focus on arrests and wanted to find other solutions. He said the rollout of a new fare payment system using smartphones, which starts in May, would make it easier to check if someone paid the fare.

“I do not believe in criminalizing fare evasion,” Foye said at a recent state Senate hearing.

Riders who fail to pay the fare can receive a civil summons with a $100 fine. They can also be arrested on a “theft of services” charge, a misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail, if they have a history of similar arrests or lack valid identification.

Transit advocates say the prevalence of fare evasion reflects how many New Yorkers struggle to pay for the basics, like subway and bus fares. After intense lobbying by advocates, Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced a discount program this year that provides half-price MetroCards for poor New Yorkers. But it included far fewer people than expected.

For bus drivers, striking the right balance between enforcing the rules and avoiding conflict with riders is difficult and, sometimes, dangerous. In 2008, a bus driver was stabbed to death by a rider who did not pay his fare — the first slaying of a city bus driver in more than 27 years. In response, the authority offered classes to drivers on defusing tense situations and added plastic partitions between drivers and passengers.

When a passenger refuses to pay, transit officials say the bus driver should politely say the price. If that does not work, bus drivers are told to press the F5 button and continue boarding other passengers.

Luis, the Queens bus driver, said safety was always on his mind. “What if I said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to pay.’ You don’t know if he’s armed with a knife or gun. I have this,” he said, pointing to his partition. “But this isn’t going to stop a bullet or someone from reaching over.”

Fare evasion has been far less of a problem on the city’s Select Bus Service routes — faster buses that account for 13 percent of bus ridership, where customers pay before boarding. The fare evasion rate on those buses is only 2.5 percent, a figure that is low partly because MTA employees, known as “eagle teams,” patrol buses to ticket riders who do not pay. The agency is testing using the teams on regular buses.

Some transit advocates question the MTA statistics and say officials are inflating the problem. The figures are based on observations along 140 of the 317 city bus routes that are extrapolated for the entire system. The agency does not even use the tally from bus drivers pressing the F5 button — that figure is used only to identify “hot spots” for fare evasion.

Back on the Q65 bus in Queens, Marty Ross admitted that he once skipped the fare because he forgot his MetroCard and did not have enough change.

“It happens to everyone,” said Ross, 68, of the Bronx. “Not everyone can pay every day.”

But another rider, Kevin Molina, a 23-year-old landscaper, said fare beaters hurt paying riders.

“I’ve never done it,” he said. “I pay my fair share. Those who don’t pay make the prices go up for the rest of us.”

1 in 5 Bus Riders in New York City Skip the Fare, Far Worse Than Elsewhere

NEW YORK — The Q65 bus came to a stop along a residential block in Queens and a construction worker stepped onboard. He walked past the farebox without paying. The driver pushed the F5 button on his dashboard.

1 in 5 bus riders in New York City skip the fare, far worse than elsewhere

<h1>NEW YORK — In January, a sleeping rider was stabbed in the head with a screwdriver on New York City’s subway. A month before that, a police officer fended off five homeless men who attacked him on a train platform. And on Sunday afternoon, a man was fatally shot at a subway station in Queens, the first murder on the system in more than a year.</h1>

This article originally appeared in <a id="37c19551-bc57-42da-9984-970b46d1f4b9" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/nyregion/nyc-subway-crime.html">The New York Times</a>.

Years After Subway Crime Plummeted, Dread of a Creeping Return

The subway has come a long way since the dark days of the 1980s and 1990s when violence was rampant and riders felt constant dread.

Years after Subway crime plummeted, dread of a creeping return

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Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Edgar Sandoval

Articles written by the author

New York Tackled Subway Crime. But Is It Starting to Come Back?

New York Tackled Subway Crime. But Is It Starting to Come Back?

New York Tackled Subway Crime. But Is It Starting to Come Back?

New York Tackled Subway Crime. But Is It Starting to Come Back?

How Rampant Is Fare Evasion? At Times Square, One Rider a Minute Sneaks In

How Rampant Is Fare Evasion? At Times Square, One Rider a Minute Sneaks In

How Rampant Is Fare Evasion? At Times Square, One Rider a Minute Sneaks In

How Rampant Is Fare Evasion? At Times Square, One Rider a Minute Sneaks In.

1 in 5 bus riders in New York City skip the fare, far worse than elsewhere

Years after Subway crime plummeted, dread of a creeping return