A surge of law enforcement underground produces safer-feeling platforms and a remarkable number of people looking at phones in pairs
Subway Police Overtime Soars as the City Discovers the Most Expensive Way to Stand Near a MetroCard Machine
NEW YORK – To reassure a nervous riding public, city and state leaders sent a wave of police officers into the subway, and the officers went, and stood, and the meter ran. A civic journal’s survey of the transit debate, citing local reporting, notes that overtime pay for extra officers in the subway leapt from 4 million dollars in 2022 to 155 million. Riders say the presence is unmistakable. At many stations there are now two, three or four officers stationed just inside the turnstiles, protecting the area of the system statistically least likely to go anywhere.
“I feel safe at the turnstile,” said Lucille Bergstrom, a bookkeeper who commutes from Jackson Heights. “The turnstile is extremely secure. If anything happens to me in the first six feet of my journey, there are four officers. They are right there. They are looking at one phone together. After that I go down the stairs and it is me and a man shouting at a pole. But those first six feet. Fort Knox.”
Deployment Patterns
The Roosevelt Avenue Observatory of Uniformed Presence, a rider group that counts officers the way birdwatchers count warblers, has charted where the surge tends to gather:
- Beside the turnstiles: abundant
- Near the booth, in conversation: common
- At the top of the stairs, where there is signal: very common
- On the platform: occasional sightings
- On the train: rare; photograph if seen
- In the last car at 1 a.m.: unconfirmed, possibly folklore
Observatory director Augustin Delacroix-Hayes said the clustering has a practical explanation. “Radios and phones do not work well in the tunnels,” he said. “So they stay where they can be reached. Which is where nothing is happening. It is like guarding a bank by standing in the parking lot. You are definitely near the bank.”
The Case For
Supporters point out that visible police deter crime and that riders consistently say they want more of them. Officials have defended the effort firmly, with the agency’s security chief telling a newspaper that transit police are deployed around the clock across the system and that the numbers show results. Many riders agree. “I like seeing them,” said a retiree at 74th Street. “I would like to see them forty feet further in. But I like seeing them.”
The Arithmetic
The Observatory has attempted to put 155 million dollars in perspective. At the current fare, it equals about fifty-two million rides. It would pay for a great many elevators, or station cleaners, or social workers, or several of the century-old columns. Divided by the number of fare evaders stopped, Delacroix-Hayes said, the cost per recovered fare is “somewhere between ridiculous and a helicopter.”
A survey of 600 riders found that 69 percent feel safer with officers present, 57 percent wish they were on the trains, and 41 percent have seen officers stop someone for skipping a $3 fare while “something much worse was happening over by the bench.” Twenty-two percent said the officers had given them directions, and that the directions were good.
The Officers’ View
Those on the detail say the work is harder than it appears. Shifts are long. The air is bad. The job is mostly waiting for something to go wrong and hoping it does not. “People walk by and say, look at them standing around,” said an officer near a booth in Queens, who asked not to be named. “Yes. That is the assignment. They told us to be visible. I am being as visible as I can. I have been visible for eleven hours.”
Overtime as a Way of Life
The pay has not gone unnoticed in the ranks. Veteran officers describe the subway detail as dull but dependable, with extra shifts available to anyone willing to spend a double tour beside a vending machine. One sergeant is said to have paid off a boat. The Observatory does not begrudge it. “They are taking the hours that are offered,” Delacroix-Hayes said. “The question is who is offering, and whether they have looked at a platform lately.”
What Riders Ask For
The Observatory’s recommendations are brief. Move some officers from the entrance to the trains. Fix the radios so they can be reached underground. Pair police with outreach workers for the calls that are not about crime. And once, as an experiment, station someone in the last car at 1 a.m., and let the folklore be confirmed.
London Policing Offers Perspective
The pattern is not unknown in the United Kingdom, where officers also congregate where the tea is. The London Prat’s British satirical news policing pages reported six constables guarding a ticket hall at Stratford “in case it left.” Its London satirical news overtime report estimated that the capital’s most heavily protected asset is a Costa.
Bergstrom passed through her turnstile on Friday under the gaze of four officers, one of whom nodded. She nodded back. Then she went down the stairs alone. The man was still shouting at the pole. The pole, as ever, said nothing. Bohiney Magazine stayed by the turnstile, where it felt very safe.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/