NYC Mayor Opens Anti-Crime Drive

Apr. 5, 1965 - New York Mayor Robert Wagner opened a drive today to free the subways of the terror spread by “the mugger, the hoodlum, and the young punk.”

Starting Wednesday, a policeman armed with a revolver and a nightstick will patrol every train between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m., the Mayor said in a radio and television address. 

The Mayor, in ordering 1,200 men into the campaign against subway crime, also said that one or more policemen would patrol each of the 480 stations in the system after 8 p.m. He described the late evening and early morning hours as the key “trouble period.”While the Mayor was beginning his drive against terror in the subways, several bills aimed at cutting the crime rate in the city’s system were filed in Albany by Assemblyman Thomas LaFauci, a Queens Democrat.

The bills call for closed-circuit television to provide surveillance of each station, communications systems between cars in each train and between trains and stations, and a three-car limit on trains between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Wagner also ordered the following steps to be taken immediately:— The closing and locking of doors of rear cars during non-rush hours as passengers thin out, to reduce the danger of crime in sparsely occupied cars.

— The closing of auxiliary entrances and passageways into subway stations during night hours.

— The granting of permission for members of Housing Authority police, correction officers, and sanitation police to ride the subways free of charge to and from work or on assignment in uniform.

Firemen and city police already travel the subways free.

The question of safety in the subways has become a major issue in the 1965 city election campaign, in which Mayor Wagner is seeking a fourth term. Last week, it was disclosed that serious crimes on subways rose 41.4% in the first three months of this year over a year ago.

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