Last week, in response to the ridership’s fear of crime, Gov. Hochul announced the state will deploy 750 National Guard soldiers and 250 state troopers and MTA officers to the subways. This amounts to sending four Army rifle companies and an extra police precinct’s worth of troopers into the transit system.
But to do what exactly? They will help conduct bag searches in a few stations, a mismatch for a problem that doesn’t start or end with the things people carry, but centers on basic concerns about public order, quality of life, and social cooperation in the subways.
It is a precarious choice of personnel. While National Guard soldiers are citizens who can be deployed to war in a matter of months — as they were in the aftermath of 9/11 — they are hardly police officers. I have served in both roles, and the difference is stark.
Soldiers have none of the training and skills necessary to handle the myriad crimes and crises that spring up in the subways and require police. That is why, at present, riders only see them at hubs like Grand Central and Penn Station. Surrounded by actual police officers, they are typically on hand to be the first responders to a terror attack. Their role is to do battle with the type of gunmen who killed dozens of commuters such as in the 2008 attack on Victoria Terminus, Mumbai’s version of Grand Central, using assault rifles and grenades.
That attack startled the NYPD for its simplicity, brutality and body count. Among my 19 years in the NYPD, three were spent as an intelligence officer. I deployed to Mumbai to investigate the attack, retracing the steps of terrorists, talking to police, and reviewing video footage.
Back in New York, we realized we needed military-grade firepower both as a deterrent and a response to such a threat, and we knew New York City was perpetually in terrorists’ crosshairs. This is one of the reasons that even as the National Guard scaled back its presence in New York City after 9/11, it continued to deploy to........