Just 24 hours after Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed the National Guard and the State Police in the New York City subway to quell fears of crime, the unusual show of force drew intense criticism on Thursday from various corners, some unexpected.
On the left, Jumaane N. Williams, the city’s public advocate, warned that Ms. Hochul’s plan would “criminalize the public on public transit.” Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, a democratic socialist from Brooklyn, said it was a “ham-fisted and authoritarian response” that “validates G.O.P. propaganda about urban lawlessness in an election year.”
Centrists fretted that the deployment of troops carrying long guns — beamed across the country by Fox News and other cable outlets — would actually make New Yorkers and would-be tourists feel less safe, not more.
“The militarization of a response like this can be counterproductive, actually,” Representative Pat Ryan, an embattled Hudson Valley Democrat and former Army officer, said on CNN.
Even top brass from the New York Police Department took issue.
In an unorthodox post on X, John Chell, the department’s chief of patrol, implied the governor’s approach was beside the point. He cited recent statistics suggesting that transit crime has dropped after a spike in January because more of his officers were walking the beat.
“Our transit system is not a ‘war’ zone!” he wrote, adding that the governor’s plan to check passengers’ bags was hardly a novel technique: “Bag checks have been around since 2005???”
Instead of outside law enforcement assistance, Chief Chell argued that state leaders should be working to repeal or overhaul criminal justice laws enacted by Democrats in recent years that make it harder to require that bail be set for repeat offenders. Those changes are a nonstarter among ruling Democrats in Albany, but Chief Chell suggested his own solution: “If you want change, then vote for the change you seek.”
The disagreements laid bare the fissures still dividing New York after years of grappling with a pandemic crime surge that has complicated the city’s rebound and damaged the party’s political standing.
The Police Department rarely airs disagreements with political leaders publicly. But Chief Chell’s statement was particularly unusual given the close alliance between Mayor Eric Adams, who oversees the department, and Ms. Hochul.
In this case, the mayor and the governor do apparently disagree. Mr. Adams had requested more money from the state to pay for overtime for the city’s police force to increase its presence underground. When Ms. Hochul, who has already committed tens of millions of dollars to police overtime, decided on an alternative, the mayor skipped the announcement, citing a conflict.
It was not immediately clear if City Hall approved Mr. Chell’s statement, but Tarik Sheppard, a top police spokesman, said Chief Chell’s post should not be read as criticism of Ms. Hochul’s plan.
“We would always support more bodies coming into transit and keeping it safe,” Mr. Sheppard said. “His comments about a war zone had to do with perception, not the governor adding the National Guard down there.”
A spokesman for the mayor declined to comment.
Ms. Hochul said she had two overarching goals when she developed the policy prescriptions: reassuring New Yorkers that the labyrinth subway system was safe and sending a political message ahead of this fall’s elections that Democrats take the issue seriously.
The stakes are high for both.
Crime has generally been on the decline since its pandemic high. But the city faced a 45 percent spike in major crimes on the subway in January, as well as a series of recent violent incidents that Ms. Hochul and others fear will undermine the confidence of commuters who are key to the region’s economic recovery. They include stabbings, shootings, passengers shoved onto the tracks and, just a week ago, a train conductor injured in a slashing attack.
Republicans have had political success pinning the blame for much of it on Democrats, starting with Ms. Hochul. Democrats tried to play down its electoral significance and, in 2022, paid a price: losing nearly every swing congressional race in New York State and, with them, control of the House.
With another major election looming this fall, Ms. Hochul appears determined to avoid a repeat of that debacle.
“My job is to protect the people of this state, and I’ll do it,” she explained on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday. “And I’m also going to demonstrate that Democrats fight crime as well.”
The shift comes at the same time Ms. Hochul is trying to stake out a more aggressive stance on the migrant crisis stretching from the border to New York City. She has appeared frequently in recent weeks on national television to blame congressional Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan compromise that would have clamped down on illegal immigration.
Ms. Hochul and her allies also pushed back on critics within her own party. She accused some of fearmongering and cherry-picking just one aspect of a broader five-point transit plan. In addition to flooding the system with 750 members of the National Guard and 250 others to randomly search commuters’ bags, it includes $20 million for mental health workers as well as a legislative proposal to allow judges to ban people convicted of a violent crime from riding the subway.
The governor did say she shared concerns about the types of long guns that National Guard troops carry. A spokesman said she had asked on Thursday that the soldiers stop carrying them in the subway system.
There was some support for the plan from subway riders and among some moderate and conservative Democrats, including one of Ms. Hochul’s most persistent Democratic critics, Representative Tom Suozzi.
Mr. Suozzi has urged his party for years to take voters’ fears about crime more seriously, even if they are not always matched by statistics. He recently used that approach to win a special election for a Long Island swing seat.
“I applaud the governor for continuing to lean into the crime issue,” he said on Thursday. “She is right.”
Still, the voices of critics drowned out those of supporters.
Civil liberties advocates warned that the planned searches of commuters’ bags harked back to stop-and-frisk policies. Adrienne Adams, the relatively moderate speaker of the City Council, said there are ways other than “more policing” to address the issues in the subway.
“We need to take a look at the root causes,” she said.
Even some Democrats otherwise inclined to agree with the need for extraordinary measures said they found issue not so much with Ms. Hochul’s goal but its execution.
“I worry that it sends the signal to the world that the city is more dangerous than it is,” said Howard Wolfson, a Democratic strategist who served as deputy mayor under Michael R. Bloomberg.
Not even Republicans, who have called for more police on the streets and pounded Ms. Hochul in the past, were willing to lend their support.
“What we should be focused on is repealing bail reform and criminal justice reform,” said Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a former New York police officer who flipped a left-leaning Long Island House seat in 2022.
“It’s a complete smoke-and-mirrors show,” he added.
Several hours later, Mr. D’Esposito was to attend the State of the Union address; he invited as guests two New York City police officers injured during an altercation with migrants in Times Square. Ms Hochul was also there as a guest of Representative Adriano Espaillat, Democrat of New York.
Reporting was contributed by Maria Cramer, Chelsia Rose Marcius and Jeffery C. Mays.
