While appearing on “NBC Nightly News,” a New York Police Department (NYPD) chief said that officers arrest criminals with 50 to 100 prior arrests “all the time.”
“We arrest people all the time that have 50-plus arrests, 100-plus arrests,” NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper said while speaking to NBC News Correspondent Stephanie Gosk on Wednesday. Kemper emphasized that one of the biggest problems facing the city’s first responders is repeat offenders who are arrested and re-released onto the streets shortly thereafter.
The interview took place in response to an announcement from New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s office revealing her “Five-Point Plan” to make subway travel safer for residents and visitors of New York City. The plan includes deploying 1,000 New York State Police, New York National Guard, and Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police (MTAPD) to monitor the subway and support NYPD bag checks.
“I’m redeploying nearly one thousand members of the New York State Police, MTA Police, and MTA National Guard to conduct bag checks in the city’s busiest transits,” Governor Hochul said in a press conference announcing her office’s plan. “You’ll start seeing them at the tables, making sure that weapons are not being brought in, working in concert with our NYS police as well as our NYPD, because no one heading to their job or to visit family or going to a doctor’s appointment should have to worry that anyone sitting next to them possesses a deadly weapon.”
Other initiatives stated in the plan included new measures to prevent anyone convicted of committing an assault while on the subway system from entering the transportation system again, improving communication between law enforcement and district attorneys, and installing new camera monitoring equipment.
In a separate interview with Fox 5, New York City Mayor Eric Adams echoed Kemper’s concerns, stating that the city faces a “recidivism crisis” that has placed transit workers in harm’s way.
“38 people committed assaults on transit workers. Out of those 38 people, they committed 1,126 crimes in our city, recidivism crisis. And that’s the same with—when you look at shoplifters, 542 people committed over 7,600 crimes in our city,” Mayor Adams added.
This piece first appeared at TPUSA.
