Tuesday's rush-hour subway shooting in Brooklyn has raised questions about New York City Mayor Eric Adams' public transit safety plan and reignited the debate around defunding the police.
According to police, on Tuesday morning, at least 10 subway riders were shot in Sunset Park after a gunman tossed a smoke canister onto a train car and began opening fire on the crowd of morning commuters.
As of publication time, the shooter remained at large, and New York City residents have expressed concern over the increased police presence under Adams' plan, arguing that police resources have failed to ensure public safety.
"[T]he NYPD budget is more than $10 billion, they claim there are officers on every subway stop, and yet this still happened," one Twitter user wrote. "this should tell you how useful they are for public safety."
"So it turns out that all those extra cops in the subway, arresting people for fare evasion and harassing homeless people, aren't actually keeping anyone safe," another said.
Another user also mentioned police arresting homeless people on trains.
Largest police force in the country and they can’t find someone who shot up a train at 8:30am. But they did spend all month removing and arresting homeless people from the trains.
— .. (@TheBlackLayers) April 12, 2022
"It should concern you that that police presence results in fines, fees and removals of/for hundreds of commuters every day, but that that police presence could not prevent, anticipate or efficiently respond to a mass shooting during rush hour," another user tweeted.
User Cooper Lund expressed frustration about the police presence in the subway not stopping the shooter. "The subways are full of cops," they tweeted. "You can see them on their phones all day, and it didn't do anything to stop this."
In the wake of a tragic shooting on the subway, a lot of people are going to be calling for more cops as a kind of natural policy reflex, but the thing is that the subways are full of cops. You can see them on their phones all day, and it didn’t do anything to stop this.
— Cooper Lund (@cooperlund) April 12, 2022
Activist group Abolition Park mentioned an incident where a teenager was allegedly beaten by NYPD officers over an issue with a fare.
The subway shooting is yet another example of the NYPD failing to keep New Yorkers safe. Not too long ago there was a viral video of multiple NYPD officers attacking a teenager for fair evasion; yet today there were no officers to prevent a mass shooting?
— Abolition Park (@AbolitionPark) April 12, 2022
One other user said they felt the mayor would use the shooting to "justify mass surveillance."
So sick about the subway shooting in Sunset Park -- and that the mayor will most certainly use it to justify mass surveillance and suppression policing that won't make anyone safer.
— Stephen Lurie (@luriethereal) April 12, 2022
Last year, Adams, a former NYPD officer, campaigned on a successful platform that vowed to support the city's police force as other major U.S. cities reconfigured police budgets in the wake of the George Floyd protests.
The New York Police Department's budget is the biggest and most expensive in the country. Although Adams cut funding to most city agencies in his first executive budget proposal, the mayor kept police spending flat at roughly $6 billion.
Less than two months after taking office, Adams also released a safety plan for the city's transit system in an effort to address public safety concerns while simultaneously supporting those experiencing homelessness and mental illness on the subways.
As part of the plan, 30 joint response teams from the NYPD, the Department of Homeless Services, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and community-based providers were deployed across the city. Each team would consist of two police officers, an outreach worker and a clinician.
Tuesday's shooting occurred at the 36th Street station which is served by the D, N and R trains—which were among the first six lines Adams' plan targeted. Teams were first mobilized on the A, E, 1, 3, N and R.
In his first statements following the incident, Adams commended New Yorkers and city officials for their response, saying: I think that when you look at how miraculous this is, you have to point to the passengers and the transit authority officials."
"I believe lives were saved based on the actions of — that we witnessed on some of the amateur video that was released. You saw passengers coming to the aid of each other. I just cannot thank New Yorkers enough for how we responded," he said.
Adams' office referred Newsweek's request for comment to the NYPD. Newsweek reached out to the NYPD for comment.
