NYC subway mayhem mounts on Kathy Hochuls watch and she hopes you wont notice

Days after yet another stranger-on-stranger subway murder rattled New Yorkers, the governor and the mayor stood together to reassure commuters.“We will do whatever it takes to make our subways safer,” vowed Gov.Kathy Hochul.Oops: Hochul didn’t make these remarks last week.She made them four years ago.The subways today aren’t much safer — but Hochul, on the eve of another re-election, is hoping you’re exhausted by the topic. This year looks eerily like 2022: In little more than two weeks, two innocent commuters lost their lives in unprovoked attacks.

 Preventable attacks: Both incidents show the cost of a lenient criminal-justice system. On Sept.30, construction worker Mesias Lojano lost his life on a Queens J train after Jyrell Thomas allegedly stabbed him repeatedly.Weeks earlier, police had arrested Thomas for shoplifting at a Bronx Target, and for fleeing arrest — but under laws that Hochul supports, a judge released him. On Oct.

17 Darrel Rodriguez, coming home from his security job, was shot to death on a Midtown subway platform, allegedly by 17-year-old Xavian Collins.Collins was reportedly smoking pot in the station, and Rodriguez told him to knock it off. Because the state goes easy on juvenile offenders — under another policy Hochul supports — we can’t know if police had arrested Collins before.

 But the killing itself is exactly the kind of case that broken-windows policing was invented to prevent. A masked and hooded kid toking in the subway is exhibiting antisocial behavior.Once upon a time, cops could have arrested him for the smaller infraction — and prevented a killing. Except: We’ve stopped arresting people for smoking pot altogether.And Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s NYPD is doing less criminal enforcement in transit this year, period.

 Through mid-October 2026, transit arrests are down 5% year-over-year, and farebeating arrests down 14%. Not coincidentally, crime is up.Serious subway violence is up 6%, and seven...