Kathy Hochul Is No Crime Fighter

Ms. Hochul is now running an ad that says she’s trying to guarantee “a safe walk home at night, a subway ride free of fear.” For the grim reality, read the New York Post, where America’s hardest working police reporters cover America’s hardest working criminals. “A 62-year-old was punched in the face during an unprovoked attack at a Bronx subway station on Sunday night and tumbled onto the tracks,” the paper reported early in the a.m. Monday. “Luckily there was no train pulling into the station.”

On Friday afternoon, “a man was pushed onto the tracks at a Brooklyn subway station.” The surveillance tape shows the attacker sprinting across the platform and clocking the unsuspecting victim. Another man was pushed onto the tracks in the Bronx at about noon on Oct. 15. Last month a father of two was stabbed to death on a Brooklyn train. The alleged perpetrator, a homeless man, had been arrested in 2021, also for a subway stabbing, but he was out on supervised release.

This weekend Ms. Hochul and New York City Mayor

Eric Adams

announced a plan to add “approximately 1,200 additional overtime officer shifts each day on the subway.” Better late than never, but try telling that to the people who were assaulted last week.

Nicole Gelinas,

a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes that the transit police forces have a head count on paper of about 4,000, so it would be “a big deal” to add 1,200 extra daily shifts.

Yet how long can New York keep up a surge that’s built on overtime? Ms. Hochul requires only two weeks, enough to get her past the Nov. 8 election. Sorry to be cynical, but this isn’t a solution built for the long term. The joint press release mentions some money coming “from the state’s public emergency fund,” with a further commitment “to work with the city on a dedicated revenue source to support additional police presence.”

Hmmm. New York has a state budget that’s twice as big as Florida’s, despite a smaller population. Yet it’s failing its most basic duty, to protect citizens from a Hobbesian state of nature. “This isn’t brain surgery,”

Ray Kelly,

the former longtime commissioner of the New York Police Department, told a radio host recently. “You go back and look at the things we were doing then and you re-implement them.”

The state’s 2019 bail “reform” is a particular point of contention. Ms. Hochul’s campaign ad says she signed a bill that “toughens bail laws to keep repeat offenders off our streets.” Her deal allows cash bail for career shoplifters and more gun offenders, but it isn’t a wholesale reversal of the 2019 law. Far more substantial changes are needed.

A disturbed man this summer who broke a subway worker’s collarbone had 41 prior arrests, including after he randomly punched an Asian woman in the face last year. A woman with a history of brandishing blades finally earned a $500,000 bail last month that will presumably take her off the streets. All she needed to do was attack an 82-year-old man with a machete and fracture his skull. Some of these people probably belong in mental institutions, not prisons, but either way the system doesn’t work.

Mr. Zeldin has put crime on the agenda, including by holding a news conference at the site of a Bronx subway attack. Don’t forget the crazy moment this summer when Mr. Zeldin, a sitting Member of Congress, was almost stabbed at a campaign rally. State authorities let the attacker go, until he was picked up by the feds. Mr. Zeldin wants to repeal cashless bail, and he promises to fire local prosecutors if they refuse to enforce the law as written. One polling average puts him down by only 6.1 points, which is remarkable given New York’s liberal tilt.

When Ms. Hochul replaced Gov.

Andrew Cuomo

last year, she could have switched directions on crime. She didn’t, maybe fearing a progressive primary challenge from Attorney General

Letitia James.

Ms. Hochul can’t change her record two weeks before Election Day.

“You deserve to feel safe,” she says in her campaign ad, “and as your Governor, I won’t stop working until you do.” Maybe what New Yorkers need to feel safe is exactly that: for Ms. Hochul to stop working as their Governor.