New York City Mayor Eric Adams is urging residents to send him pictures of NYPD officers surfing their phones at city subway stations so that he can correct any situation that allows rising crime to continue, the Washington Examiner reported.
"You walk downstairs, you see five transit officers standing at the booth looking at their phones," Adams said Tuesday at a budget briefing. "If you see it, send me a picture. Let me know, because I'll go to that district the next day and see exactly what's happening."
Adams made the comments when asked by a journalist about reports of numerous uniformed police officers scrolling through phones while on duty guarding the city's transport network, the Daily Mail reported.
"We are going to start taking very aggressive actions to make sure police are patrolling our subway system and not patrolling their iPhones," Adams said.
He has been expressing his disappointment about the NYPD Transit Bureau's deployment of officers as the crime rate has risen significantly, including a mass shooting earlier this month at a subway station in which 10 people were wounded, according to the Washington Examiner.
"I have been meeting with the chief of the Transit [Bureau] and the police commissioner to talk about better deployment, said Adams, who himself was a transit officer. “I want police officers on the train."
The mayor said New Yorkers "have a right to be angry, a right to expect more — to feel safe, to be safe, to know that your city is looking out for you, your family, and those in need," the Daily Mail reported.
Adams also said the city should more effectively enforce fare evasion.
"Fare evasion is a problem," he said. "We don't want to be heavy-handed, but we do want to return the message that any and everything can't go on our subway system."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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