Crime is down, but more cops to hit city streets and subways

Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that crime was down in 2024, but also said during a Monday press conference that more officers would soon be deployed to the city’s streets and subways. Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office

By Ryan Schwach

Overall crime was down in 2024, the mayor and police commissioner said on Monday. However, that isn't stopping them from deploying more cops to the city’s streets and subways.

At a press conference from police headquarters on Monday, Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that crime was down overall and in most categories last year, but also said they intend to increase the amount of officers patrolling the city in order to address the “perception” of safety in the city.

While the numbers show that most crime is down in the city, high profile incidents like the arson attack on the F train in Coney Island have given New Yorkers an uneasy feeling, the mayor said.

Overall, there were 3,662 fewer incidents of major crime in 2024 than in 2023, and five of the seven major crime categories decreased.

In the subways, major crime was down 5.4 percent compared to 2023’s numbers.

Homicides went down from 488 in 2023 to 377 in 2024, and shootings have gone down from 1,562 to 903.

“These are not just numbers,” said Tisch, who is entering her first calendar year as the city’s top cop. “We're talking about thousands of people who were not injured, abused, attacked or targeted by criminals.”

However, Adams and Tisch – the fourth police commissioner of the mayor’s term – are aiming at addressing that perception problem, rather than the numbers, and are going into the same bag of solutions as when crime is statistically high: more cops.

In the next few weeks, more than 200 additional officers will head underground to carry out “specialty train patrols,” according to Tisch, specifically aimed at the 50 highest crime stations in the city.

“It's all part of a strategy to refocus our subway efforts to the places where the crime is occurring,” she said.

The city will also begin to build on a policing program in Brooklyn which sends officers to high crime zones. Tisch said 650 additional officers per day will be deployed to the zones.

The commissioner said the NYPD had yet to identify the zones the new officers will head to.

More than 600 officers will join the NYPD ranks when they graduate the academy on Tuesday, and a new class expected to be the biggest in a decade is set to begin in the coming weeks.

Deploying more cops to address crime has been Adams’ go to strategy throughout his tenure as mayor, doing so in times of increasing crime and decreasing crime.

He attempted to stress to New Yorkers on Monday that the influx of cops was not the result of an influx of crime.

“It is clear, perception always overrides reality,” Adams said. “When you look at some of the horrific incidents in these last few days, the average New Yorker would believe that they're living in a city that is out of control, that is not the reality.”

The officials argued that deploying more cops has worked in the past, and is the reason that crime has gone down.

While crime was statistically down in the city in 2024, the city will be deploying more cops in order to address the “perception” of crime amid several high-profile violent incidents in recent weeks. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach

“When we identify problematic zones based on our data, what do we do? We flood them with cops, and we see the crime in those zones come down,” Tisch said. “So, I think the two things together, hiring additional officers and then being more precise on our data, where we're deploying our cops, those two things together are going to make a difference. We know that, because in the past, they have made a difference.”

However, all of the high-profile crimes that have facilitated the public’s negative perception of crime in the city – particularly in the subway – occurred while Adams and even Governor Kathy Hochul deployed law enforcement to the train system.

Most of Adams’ press conference on Monday included many of the mayor’s criminal justice catchphrases he often repeated in 2024, including claiming recidivism is the main driver of crime.

According to NYPD data, from 2018 to 2024, there was a 61.3 percent increase in people arrested for burglary three or more times in the same year.

“We need every part of the criminal justice system to play their role,” the mayor said. “These numbers here of recidivism clearly shows that there are far too many people who are repeatedly committing the same crime, not in a lifetime, in one year. In one year they are repeatedly going back out again.”

Adams cited a lack of mental health resources, and that many of the recidivists often have mental health issues.

“You've noticed these random acts of violence that many of you have heard me talk about, often they fit into the categories of people with severe mental health issues,” Adams said, pushing a policy of involuntary commitment, which is supported by Hochul but questioned by criminal justice groups.

“We need to focus on, number one, getting the comfort level in our mental health institutions,” he said. “We can't just continually turn people loose, give them medicine one day and turn them loose. That is just not working, so we have to change the mindset there.”