According to NYPD data, subway crime fell 5.4% in 2024, the second consecutive year of decline, as ridership rose to post-pandemic highs. Yet Vital City analysts found that subway assaults have tripled since 2009, with the per-ride violent-crime rate stabilizing above pre-pandemic levels. An MTA report shows that while total assaults against workers declined 31% from 2023 to 2024, 116 assaults were recorded in 2024.

John Wachnicki, a bus driver, said he believed mental-health problems had intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic and that police may need to intervene when individuals become aggressive. Riders described stained seats and people sleeping on trains. Nicky Sunshine, another rider, recounted sexual harassment by a passenger and said she used pepper spray.

Union leaders described assaults arising from different circumstances, including a dispute over a bus route detour. Attacks on subway workers can be “random” and “totally unprovoked,” they said, pointing to a veteran worker who was stabbed after a passenger refused to leave a train.

Even with reported crime down, TWU Local 100 leaders continue to press for action. “We cannot be superiors and just keep the trains moving,” said Noah L. Rodriguez, a former train operator and the union’s communications director. “So if there’s a disservice, get the police involved.” Union president John V. Chiarello described the need for treatment as a public-health issue that the transit system cannot address alone.

Deputy Press Secretary William D. Fowler said the Subway Safety Plan has helped “over 3,500 people who were formerly living on the subway get connected to a low-barrier shelter bed.” In August 2025, the Adams administration proposed the Compassionate Interventions Act for the following state legislative session. It sought to expand involuntary hospital transport and treatment for people posing a danger to themselves or others because of substance use disorder; it was a proposal, not an enacted expansion of clinicians’ authority.

The city’s outreach teams pair mental-health clinicians with police officers to connect people with services. TWU Local 100 wants continued coordination with government on worker safety and access to treatment. “We want people to be put in the hospital and then receive the treatment that they need and then come out and hopefully adapt to society, not that they got to live on the ground,” Chiarello said.