New York City sticking the National Guard on bag-checking duty for the subway system is already proving insufficient to protect people. It helps explain why people are fleeing the city.
A man was shot with his own gun on the subway during rush hour on Thursday after he allegedly initiated a confrontation with another passenger. The alleged instigator was also stabbed by a woman who was trying to stop the fight. Four shots were fired, and the subway car was “covered with blood and ballistics” when police arrived.
As of now in New York City, carrying firearms on the subway is prohibited. Yet this evidently slipped by the National Guard, which Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have reduced to being glorified bag checkers searching the purses of elderly women in order to make people feel safe using the subway. This isn’t the fault of the National Guard, to be clear. It’s the fault of Hochul and Adams who are using them as safety theater rather than doing the work of prosecuting criminals and deterring criminals with police presence and criminal consequences.
That instinct to focus on the appearance of safety rather than actual safety probably explains why New York City’s population is declining. According to census estimates released Thursday, the Big Apple lost some 78,000 people in 2023. This comes after losing more than 126,000 people in 2022. From April 2020 to July 2023, New York City lost a total of nearly 550,000 residents, more than 6% of its population.
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The pandemic exposed just how poorly run New York City is, from its ridiculously high costs and taxes to its tendency to shrug off crime. The city refused to keep schools and playgrounds open during the pandemic, showing that schools and children were low priorities. Half a million people have recognized that the city is too expensive and not safe enough to make up for it.
With Hochul and Adams aiming for performative safety and not actual safety, it is clear why people are fleeing. New York City is incompetently run, and dangerously so, and that is why the city’s population is bleeding.