Mayor Eric Adams said Thursday that New York City will detect guns within its subway system as authorities try to make transit users feel safe following a deadly break-in attack earlier this week. announced plans to test the technology.
Adams said at a press conference that the technology trial, which won't begin for several months, will be rolled out at several stations and will provide reassurance to transit users who have been feeling anxious due to several recent high-pressure systems. said it could be useful. Profile of violent behavior.
Adams said the new technology will be implemented in partnership with Massachusetts startup Evolve Technology.
A city spokesperson clarified the mayor's previous comments, saying the city does not have a contract with Evolve and that the announcement was intended as a public offering for companies with similar products.
Evolv expressed concerns to City Hall in 2022 that its technology could cause bottlenecks if used in the subway system, according to people involved in the discussions.
“What I know about the technology is that the first version continues to improve,” Adams said Thursday in response to questions from reporters.
Evolv's device is similar to metal detectors commonly seen at courthouses and baseball stadiums. The company says these devices are programmed with a “signature” of a specific item, which allows them to detect weapons.
“These random acts of violence are having a negative impact on the psyche of New York,” Adams said. “We are going to evolve so that technology becomes part of the public safety apparatus.”
But civil liberties advocates question whether increasing surveillance of the transit system, which has already added thousands of cameras, and bag searches by police officers and National Guard troops will be the answer to safety concerns. is holding. Some technology experts also said the machines promoted by the mayor were unreliable.
Albert Fox Kahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Surveillance Project, a New York-based privacy and civil rights organization, said: “This technology is guaranteed to make commuting slower, but it won't make it safer.'' ” he said.
Evolv spokeswoman Alexandra Smith Ozerkis said the company's technology team “works with NYPD security experts to determine where and how best to use our technology to meet security and operational goals.” I understand that.”
He added that the technology “continues to improve both in detection and in its ability to operate in more difficult environments.”
Nikita Ermolaev, a researcher at the Pennsylvania-based surveillance industry group IPVM, said the devices are expensive. He said leasing a car costs about $125,000 over a four-year term. By comparison, traditional metal detectors can typically be purchased in bulk for less than $10,000 each, he added.
City officials did not say Thursday how much money they plan to spend on the pilot program.
The announcement of the new initiative comes days after a man died after being thrown in front of a train in East Harlem. The man charged in the attack, Carlton McPherson, 24, had a history of violent behavior toward others, and his family said he suffered from mental illness.
During Thursday's press conference, the mayor also announced that the city will soon begin hiring clinicians as part of a $20 million investment from the state to equip the metro with a team of mental health workers.
Adams stressed that it was unlikely anyone would be killed on the subway.
Adams said about six felons occur every day on the city's subways, which are used by an average of 4 million people a day, but “if they don't feel safe, we're not accomplishing our mission. It will happen,” he said.
So far this year, crime in the metro has increased by 4% overall compared to the same period last year, according to police data. There were five murders in the system last year, down from 10 the year before.
But city and state leaders have often said they are as concerned about perceived safety as they are about actual crime rates. Earlier this month, a confrontation on an A train ended in violence when a man grabbed a gun from another man who had been threatening him and shot him in the head. Last month, a subway worker was slashed at Rockaway Avenue Station in Brooklyn.
Some transportation advocates expressed support for the experiment.
“If technology allows us to move weapons away from platforms and trains without delaying service — a big 'what if' — passengers will You'll feel safe.''
The gun detection effort is the latest high-tech solution Adams has announced to address public safety concerns. Since his inauguration, the mayor, who describes himself as a tech geek, has announced robots patrolling Times Square, expanded the use of drones and announced that the city is using robot dogs to assist in emergencies. I've been proud of it.
Last year, the Legal Aid Society called for an investigation into the police department's use of surveillance technology, saying it violated a city law that requires disclosure of how new technology is used and how data is protected.
Jerome Greco, supervising attorney for the group's digital forensics division, said in a statement Thursday that the government's continued reliance on technology to ensure security is “misguided, costly and privacy-critical.” “This is causing a serious violation.”
The mayor's announcement Thursday marked the start of a required 90-day waiting period for the public to weigh in on the new technology and its proposed uses. Adams said city officials posted a policy online Thursday governing the use of the new surveillance equipment. Officials said the equipment will be deployed after a waiting period.
Adams' Thursday announcement is the latest enhancement in a broader effort to keep the system secure.
Subways are essential to New York's recovery from the pandemic. So concerns for passengers have become a top priority for officials, who have added more law enforcement officers, mental health workers and surveillance cameras to the system over the past two years.
The subways are patrolled by thousands of law enforcement officers, including the National Guard, state police, and city police officers. When officials deployed an additional 1,000 employees earlier this year, roughly doubling the number of expatriates, employees were already working 1,200 additional overtime shifts each day within the metro. Then 1,000 more National Guard troops, state troopers and traffic officers were added this month, and 800 more police officers were added this week.
Teams of medical workers have been dispatched to help homeless people, sometimes forcibly removing them from subways. Thousands of surveillance cameras have been installed over the past two years, bringing the total to around 16,000 surveillance cameras in the system. MTA officials say they expect it to be installed on all rail cars by the end of this year.
Transportation leaders are also installing structural features to make passengers feel safer. Officials are testing new turnstiles to stop turnstile jumpers, metal platform barriers to prevent passengers from falling onto the tracks, making the system less claustrophobic and subway cameras We plan to add brighter lighting to the system to help capture better video.
dana rubinstein Contributed to the report. alain draquelier contributed to research.
