Exclusive: NYC Mayor Eric Adams' subway safety program, 1 year later
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- It was one year ago that Mayor Eric Adams' subway safety plan went into effect.
Overnight, Eyewitness News rode the subway exclusively with the mayor to see firsthand what kind of changes - if any - have resulted.
Eyewitness News was underground with Mayor Adams for two hours overnight. Rolling through Manhattan on the A and C trains and walking the platforms. He clearly believes his subway safety plan is working.
Outreach workers were working all night, every night at 18 end-of-line stations.
At the World Trade Center Station, we watched as homeless riders were escorted off the trains and offered placement in shelters.
Not all of them accept the offer, but the mayor insisted that since the plan was enacted one year ago this week, some 4,000 homeless have been removed from the transit system. More than 25% of them, he says, are still in care.
The mayor told Burkett the plan is intended to reassure subway riders with a uniformed police presence. And that officers are expected to enforce the subway code of conduct. It's not just crime, he said, it's disorder in the system he's determined to control.
"We need to interact and we need to stop and say, 'Hey, is everything OK? Are you alright?' We can't just say I'm going to walk by them and then when we go back home that night and we turn on the news and we realize, 'Damn it! That's the person I just saw that pushed someone onto the tracks! Or just slashed someone, or just grabbed a little girl, or just threw someone for no reason at all in front of the train.' We're seeing this everyday. We had a belief of, let's just ignore it. That's just wrong," Adams said.
Mayor Adams says he's not afraid of his critics on this. He insists that the public is on his side.
Eyewitness News is tracking crime and safety across New York City and in your neighborhood
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