Blakeman and Hochul trade barbs on subway safety with less than a week to go before early voting

Gov. Kathy Hochul and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman traded barbs about subway safety on the campaign trail Monday, ahead of early voting this week and two weeks before Election Day.

Blakeman met with commuters Monday morning, highlighting the need to improve security as he rode the Long Island Rail Road from Inwood to Jamaica and Penn Station.

From there, he rode the subway to the midtown Manhattan station where Darrell Rodriguez, 26, of the Bronx two days earlier was shot in the chest during a fight on the platform at West 53rd Street and 7th Avenue by an unknown assailant.

Blakeman said the shooting exemplified the fears of commuters and called on adding more police officers and train conductors on cars and in subway stations, in addition to mental health treatment in New York City.

"We have to invest more in law enforcement. We need more conductors. People feel comfortable ... feel safer when they see a conductor. We have to have cleaner stations, and we have to provide the treatment for those who are emotionally ill," Blakeman said. "People don't feel safe anymore."

Serafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for the Hochul campaign, said the governor has helped bring down subway crime to historic lows. 

 "Gov. Hochul took office with crime spiking and the subways deserted, invested a record $4 billion in policing, put boots on the ground in our subways, and brought subway crime to its lowest level in 16 years," Chitika said in a statement. "Gov. Hochul’s work keeping New Yorkers safe is never finished, but the results are impossible to ignore." 

In 2024, Hochul deployed the National Guard on the subways and added additional Metropolitan Transportation Authority police in subways and transit hubs. Her office said the state and New York City has invested $154 million in increased NYPD patrols, including overnight and on trains. Officials also spent $5 million on 13,000 cameras on more than 6,000 subway cars and improved lighting. The state also spent $25 million on MTA Scout teams to treat the mentally ill.

Still, before Saturday’s shooting, the NYPD noted subway crimes were up by nearly 1% this year, or an increase of 15 reported crimes compared to last year. But this year was considered the "second safest year" on the subway for the past 15 years, excluding the pandemic.

The NYPD said half of the crimes were nonviolent thefts, while 30% of the transit crimes were felony assaults. More than 20% of the assaults were on NYPD officers and about 8%, or 42 assaults, on MTA employees, according to the NYPD.

Hochul appeared in the Bronx on Monday with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, announcing an expansion of the city’s 2-K childcare program for a total of 12,000 students.

Mamdani said after the event that police were still searching for the gunman in Saturday’s shooting, accusing Blakeman of capitalizing on the violence.

"I think what we've seen is he is looking to exploit any fear that a New Yorker may have at any time for his political benefit," Mamdani said. "When I look at Bruce Blakeman, I also see someone whose own executive experience decades ago was one that left his constituents in such a financial bind that the state had to take on a more active role."

Blakeman said the subways are a responsibility of the city and the state and said Mamdani and Hochul were not meeting their responsibility to keep them safe, to prevent an incident like Saturday's shooting.

"The subways are unsafe," Blakeman said. "Maybe if a police officer was there, they would have been able to stop it, or maybe the person got discouraged because of the police presence." 

Early voting begins Saturday.