Body scanners coming to NYC subway stations as city struggles to get a grip on surging crime
Crime in NYC subway stations has gotten so out of control that Democratic Mayor Eric Adams announced Thursday that body scanners are coming to the city's stations.
The scans will be used to detect weapons entering the subway stations, as city officials have been trying to deter a sharp uptick in criminal activity.
"We are going to use technology to identify those bad people who are carrying bad weapons," Adams said Thursday. "And I say to those who are afraid of scanners who rather not walk through it, I rather you be safe – so let's bring on the scanners."
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Adams said the city will undergo a 90-day waiting period for the scanners to be tested before they can be implemented in every station. In addition to the scanners, the city will hire more mental health clinicians to work alongside the New York Police Department (NYPD) "to swiftly move individuals with untreated severe mental illness out of the subway system and into care."
"This duality of technology and our mental health approach is going to accomplish the goal that we seek – transit riders should be safe, our city should be safe, people should receive the care that they deserve," Adams said.
Adams' announcement comes in the same week that three stabbings took place in and around the Big Apple’s subway system. The city announced it was deploying 800 more police to patrol its crime-ridden subways — even after around 750 National Guard troops were deployed to the underground system earlier this month and 1,000 additional police were added in February.
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On Monday, New York City announced plans to intensify a crackdown on subway fare-beating by sending at least 800 police officers specifically to keep watch on turnstiles.
There have been more than 1,700 arrests for turnstile-jumping and over 28,000 fare evasion tickets issued so far this year, data shows.
Police and Mayor Eric Adams, a former transit officer himself, in recent weeks have suggested some links between fare-skipping and violence on the trains.
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According to NYPD data, there were three homicides in the underground system in January and February, while incidents such as grand larcenies, felony assaults and robberies also saw a sharp uptick.
A cello player was hit over the head with a bottle by a crazed woman last month, while in January, Fox News meteorologist Adam Klotz was brutally beaten on a Big Apple subway by a group of teens after he intervened on behalf of an elderly man whose hair they had lit on fire.
Earlier this month, the NYPD also rolled out bag checks for subway riders to confiscate items such as knives, guns, box cutters and other weapons.
Fox News' Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.