Mayor Eric Adams insisted Sunday that Big Apple subways are safe, arguing there is just a “perception of fear” — but try telling that to riders after Saturday’s fatal random subway push in Times Square.
“New Yorkers are safe on the subway system,” said the mayor, a former NYPD transit cop, during a press conference. “I think it’s about 1.7 percent of the crimes in New York City that occur on the subway system.
“Think about that for a moment,” he said. “What we must do is remove the perception of fear.
“Cases like this aggravate the perception of fear,” he said the death of straphanger Michelle Go, 40 — who was killed when accused crazy ex-con Simon Martial, 61, allegedly pushed her in front of an oncoming train Saturday morning.
“When you see homeless individuals with mental health issues not being attended to and given the proper services, that adds to the perception of fear,” Adams said.
But straphangers and advocacy groups say the subway system has without a doubt gone down the tubes — and Go’s death is just the latest horrific example of problems that have been left to fester.
“For a lot of people, perception is reality,” said Lisa Daglian of the MTA Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee. “It’s not ‘the perception’ when crime happens to you.”
John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union International, said, “[Adams] inherited the problem, no doubt.
“But it’s objectively real that transit workers are in danger every day when they go to work.”
Straphangers also took issue with Adams’ assessment of subway safety.
“How can he say the subways are safe when incidents are happening almost every day?” saod Sharon Zhao of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, at the Times Square station Sunday. “People get pushed, people get stabbed — just regular people riding the train home from work.”
Zhou said she was once accosted while riding the subway when a homeless man came up to her and started shouting anti-Asian slurs.
“I was very lucky that all he did was attack me with words and not a broken bottle or a knife or something,” she said.
Straphanger Marcus Grant of East New York, Brooklyn, said he’s on board with Adams’ approach to crime — but thinks the mayor is off the rails when it comes to the subways.
“The drug dealing, the random verbal threats that go unreported,” Grant said. “Find me one person who feels relaxed about taking the train. Find me one person who doesn’t have their guard up. It’s not enough that the statistics are low now.”
For Natalie Kovach, Go’s Upper West Side neighbor, Saturday’s attack hit “close to home.
“It can happen to anyone,” she said. “There’s been a noticeable increase in crime and homelessness, and it seems like nobody is going anything about it.”
Another neighbor, Arthur Grabski, said he’s learned to avoid the underground.
“It does make me scared to take the subway,” Grabski said. “I’m taking Citi Bike.
“It’s like everywhere you turn, you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” he added. “In my opinion, the city is still falling apart and needs a lot of work.”
Go was waiting for an R train at the Times Square station around 9:40 a.m. Saturday when police said the homeless Martial pushed her to her death.
Martial, who told reporters he killed her because he is “God,” was awaiting arraignment on a murder charge Sunday evening.
Samuelsen called the continuing subterranean violence “symptoms of a disease that plagues the subway.
“There’s so much mental illness-driven violence above ground and below ground on the subway,” Samuelsen said. “It’s a bubble that repeatedly bursts, and it bursts on blue-collar New York.”
“I tell my son — stand inside of the column, with your back against the column, so that nobody can come up from you behind and nobody can come up on you from the front,” he said.
Maria Coste-Webber, an eyewitness to Go’s death who told The Post she was just a few feet away when the victim was shoved to her death, also said Adams needs to do more.
“Make it more safe,” she said. “It is not safe now. I don’t feel safe unless I’m standing with walls next to me. That’s the way I am now.”
But Adams says cops are doing their job policing the rails, with more officers on trains and platforms.
“The proper plan was executed,” he said of additional cop rollouts in the system. “And I continue to say this was a horrific incident. We lost a New Yorker.
“But we don’t see how many lives we saved because of a proper plan like that,” the mayor said. “And we’re going to continue to expand on it and evolve it.”
