Police in New York City are bringing back random bag searches of subway riders as the Big Apple continues to record an alarming surge in crime rates.
NYC’s public transit system has seen a disturbing increase in crimes committed against passengers.
On Tuesday, the city’s Democrat Mayor Eric Adams announced the plans to bring back random bag checks.
The mayor said he also wants more police patrolling the subways as the city attempts to curb a massive crime increase under his watch.
NYC has suffered an almost 20% increase in crime levels during the first two months of 2024 compared to the same period last year, according to NYPD data cited by the New York Post.
There were three homicides in the underground system over January and February.
Incidents such as grand larcenies, felony assaults, and robberies have also skyrocketed.
On Sunday, a 64-year-old postal worker was kicked onto the tracks at Penn Station in Manhattan.
Meanwhile, a 20-year-old woman fought off a man who punched her in the face and tried to rape her in Queens.
Last week, a subway conductor was slashed in the neck when he stuck his head out of the cabin window during a stop at a station in Brooklyn.
A cello player was hit over the head with a bottle by a crazed woman last month.
In January, Fox News meteorologist Adam Klotz was brutally beaten on a subway in NYC by a group of teens after he intervened on behalf of an elderly man whose hair they lit on fire.
Uncoincidentally, the crime rates have soared during the same period that the “sanctuary city” has been flooded with illegal aliens.
“We know people feel unsafe,” Adams, a former NYPD detective, said at a Tuesday press briefing.
“We are reinstituting bag checks.
“There are several things we are reinstituting in the system.”
The bag searches are similar in nature to the controversial “stop and frisk” program the city previously employed.
The old scheme was criticized for being implemented in a discriminatory fashion and was ruled unconstitutional a decade ago.
Proponents say it saves lives by getting weapons off the streets.
Nevertheless, Adams said police would be searching bags for weapons such as knives, box cutters, clubs, and guns.
“I’m on the subway system and I speak with riders,” the mayor said.
“They say, ‘Eric, nothing makes us feel safer than seeing that officer at the token booth, walking through the system, walking through the trains’ and that is what we want our officers to do.”
The NYPD’s transit division is deploying 94 bag screening teams to 136 subway stations and will be adding more, the New York Post reports.
However, the department did not say by how many.
The department last month boosted its presence in the system by 1,000 officers, according to the publication.
“We’re going to continuously make sure our officers move as much as possible to show a greater presence to deal with how people are feeling in our system right now,” Adams said.
Adams also said his administration is looking at testing metal detectors in a bid to keep guns off trains.
Meanwhile, New York’s Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul is expected to announce state assistance to the city’s subway safety efforts.
The plans are set to include new state personnel assisting the NYPD with bag checks and other new measures, a spokesperson for the governor told NBC.
Hochul, also a Democrat, met with Adams and top officials from the NYPD and MTA last week to discuss the plans, the outlet reports.
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