Daily News’ unprecedented analysis reveals crime rankings of city’s subway system
Highest crime rate of system’s 421 stops belongs to tiny Broad Channel in Queens, where 112 felonies and misdemeanors were tallied over a five-year period.
BY SARAH RYLEY , PETE DONOHUE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, June 22, 2014, 2:00 AM
Despite the sun-soaked platform and the saltwater-scented air, an uneasy breeze blows through the Broad Channel subway station.
Straphanger Dajon Dunton, 18, felt the whoosh of seaside anxiety while awaiting an A train at the remote stop in Queens.
“I don’t think it’s safe,” said Dunton, witness to a stabbing at the station a few months back.
“There’s always something going on, especially after the schools get out. Gang activity.
Fighting. Weapons. Stuff like that.”
An unprecedented Daily News analysis of subway crime and ridership data found that the tiny station — far from teeming Times Square and Grand Central — owned one of the highest crime rates of the system’s 421 stops.
There were 112 felonies and misdemeanors — ranging from assault to resisting arrest — recorded at Broad Channel across a five-year time period, ending in 2013.
With just 224 people swiping into the station on an average day, that works out to 27 crimes per 100,000 trips. A trip is defined as when a rider swipes into a turnstile, and does not include transfers at that station, which the MTA does not calculate.
Seven of the top 10 stations with the highest crime rates are not express or transfer stations, and four are on the Rockaway peninsula.
Police officials stressed that the subway system is safe.
Transit Bureau Chief Joseph Fox said the number of major felonies system-wide have dropped so low — an average 5.9 a day this year — that it’s a big challenge to get the figure even lower.
“The fact that you can go in any car and any station and see people holding electronic devices in their hand is a reflection of how safe people feel,” Fox said.
Broad Channel is a required transfer to the Rockaway shuttle, which goes to the western half of the Rockaway peninsula. The crowds can be both large and rowdy, filling the platforms from edge to wall, said a transit police officer patrolling an A train. Even when taking into account an estimated 2,700 daily transfers at the station, Broad Channel still has one of the highest rates in the system at two incidents per 100,000 trips.
Louis Correa says the station offers a mix of shore-seeking day-trippers and “hoodlum kids” from tough areas of the peninsula — a perfect storm for crime.
“For them, it’s easy pickings,” the 37-year-old construction worker from Far Rockaway said of those looking for trouble.
Nearly half of the crimes reported at the station were during the summer months, when beachgoers wait on the platform for the shuttle.
“You have to understand, this is a hub — everyone from the city going to the beach comes through here. . . . There’s going to be crime,” Correa said.
The Times Square-Port Authority Bus Terminal superhub had the highest number of crimes — nearly 1,800 — but an unremarkable rate of 0.59 per 100,000 trips, not taking into account transfers, due to the enormous volume of riders streaming through the commuter complex.
That’s almost exactly the citywide average — just 0.6 crimes per 100,000 trips.
“It’s extraordinarily safe, compared to what crime was in the ’90s, the ’70s and the ’80s,” Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told The News, speaking of the subway system in general. “I think we’re in very good shape, and in position to get in even better shape going forward.”
The News’ analysis was based on both Metropolitan Transportation Authority ridership data and NYPD info — obtained via Freedom of Information Law requests — on nearly 48,000 felonies and misdemeanors recorded from July 1, 2008, through June 30, 2013. The stats do not include a significant number of misdemeanor arrests for fare evasion and criminal trespass because officers generally do not write reports for those offenses, NYPD officials said.
Fox said about 62% of all crime occurred on trains this year and 38% in stations. The reverse is true for robberies, with approximately 40% of robberies on trains and 60% in stations.
Crimes committed aboard a train are added, under NYPD procedure, to the total of the next station.
Other highlights of the analysis include:
- The annual number of crimes decreased 12% from 2009 to 2012.
- When taking into account subway ridership, which increased 4.7%, the crime rate decreased by more than 16%.
- The most frequent criminal activity reported during the five-year period was larceny — with nearly 13,000 instances of petty and grand larceny on record.
- Next was weapons possession (5,361), then assault (4,379) and robbery (3,756).
- Robbers used knives in 12.5% of the incidents this year, guns 5.5% of the time and simulated having a gun 4.5% of the time, Fox said.
- Of all robberies, nearly 70% involved physical force or a threat of physical force, Fox said.
- Another 12.5% of robberies involved knives displayed.
- The 3 p.m. hour — when school lets out — is prime time for crime, with 4,668 incidents recorded during that hour alone over the five-year period.
- Nearly 40% of crime was recorded during the midday hours between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.
- When taking into account ridership, straphangers are least likely to encounter crime during the morning rush hour and most likely during the overnight hours — with the highest rate still only six per 100,000 trips between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., according to an MTA analysis.
- By platform and hour, the most crimes have been recorded on the 125th St. 4,5,6 platform during the 3 p.m. hour, with 222 crimes. That station once had the most crimes in the entire system. But the number of crimes recorded there has dropped from 646 in 2009 to 70 during the first half of last year.
- During the first half of last year, the time and place with the most crimes was the Utica Ave.-Crown Heights platform on the Nos. 3 and 4 trains during the 11 a.m. hour, with 13 crimes recorded.
- Nearly 40% of the 3,000 misdemeanor sex crimes reported during the five-year period, such as groping and flashing, were recorded during the crowded morning rush hours, with 9 a.m. being the peak hour.
- Times Square-42nd St./ Port Authority Bus Terminal had the most reported crime during the late-night hours, with 365 crimes recorded between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., followed by Broadway Junction (187), Union Square (186), Stillwell Ave. (147) and Jay St.-MetroTech (130).
- Grand larceny, defined as stealing property worth more than $1,000, is the one major crime category that has seen a big increase — from 270 during the first quarter of 2010 to 381 during the second quarter of 2013, a spike of 41%. Petty larceny has gone down.
- The 86th St. R train station in Brooklyn had the most graffiti incidents, followed by Essex-Delancey on the Lower East Side and Union Square.
- There were nine homicides, 115 felony sex crimes, 146 false bomb reports, 19 arsons and 38 strangulations.
- More recently, major felonies are down 10%, from 1,089 last year through June 15, to 982 this year through June 15, according to the analysis and NYPD data.
At Broad Channel, a majority of the crimes recorded were nonviolent offenses, like criminal mischief (17), weapon possession (15) and resisting arrest (14). But the litany of incidents includes eight robberies, 14 assaults and 14 grand larcenies. Dunton said he was at the station this year when two young men pounced on a third man. “They ran up to him and poked him in the stomach with a knife, and then they ran off,” said Dunton, who said he didn’t linger to learn the details. “I took off, too.”
The city’s safest stations are in Manhattan’s Financial District.
The pair of Wall St. stations — one a stop for the Nos. 2 and 3 trains, the other a Lexington Ave. express stop for the Nos. 4 and 5 trains — posted the lowest crime rates, at 0.04 and 0.08 crimes per 100,000 trips, respectively.
“It’s very peaceful,” said Mohammed Mostafa, who runs a newsstand at the Lexington Ave. line express stop. “It’s a gentle station. This is a working area. Most people come here to do work and then go home.”
Overall, the subway is dramatically safer than it was in the 1980s and 1990s, when crime was rampant. There were 17 major felonies per day in 1997, as opposed to just seven major felonies per day in 2013, according to an MTA committee report.
Crimes along the Staten Island rapid transit line were not included in the NYPD data analyzed by The News.
But according to the MTA report, there were 25 major felonies — defined as murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, grand larceny and grand larceny auto — in that system last year.
With Barry Paddock and Taylor Hintz
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