Why public safety is the key to functioning NYC subways crime hot spots for over 50 years

New York has suffered 40 subway homicides since 2020, a five-fold increase compared to the post-millennial norm.New York went through a similarly abrupt change in public safety underground before, in the mid-1960s — but took 25 years to fix it.The fable of how New York achieved its miracle crime decline begins in 1990, with the stabbing death of 22-year-old Utah tourist Brian Watkins in a Midtown subway station, as he defended his parents from robbers.Watkins’ killing shocked the city into cracking down on petty offenses — his killers had entered without paying their fares — before they escalated to violence.But Watkins’ killing wasn’t shocking.

His was the 18th subway murder of 1990, and eight more people would be killed through that December.For decades, New York had normalized subway violence, which had stolen the lives of students and grandmothers, executives and waiters.Decades before Brian Watkins, as I write in my book, “Movement,” there was Andrew Mormile — whose murder was shocking.

From 1904, when the subway began running, until the mid-1960s, New Yorkers had ridden without fear.In 1949, the subway carried nearly 2 billion riders with no homicides.In the years before Mormile’s killing, though, crime was rising.

In 1964, riders and workers fell victim to 1,707 major subway crimes, nearly double the 923 in 1959.Transit crime couldn’t be isolated from anxieties aboveground.

Murders citywide had increased from 548 in 1963 to 636 in 1964.In March 1965, on a Friday night, Mormile, a 17-year-old who loved animals, was dozing on a Brooklyn A train.Miscreants made their way through, shouting obscenities as they accosted passengers and groped girls.

One assailant stabbed Mormile.The killer, Christopher Lynch, was also 17. Mayor Robert Wagner vowed to protect riders from “the mugger, the hoodlum and the young punk.” He ordered a patrolman on every train between 8:00 p.m.

and 4:00 a.m.He more than doubled the transit police force.

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