De Blasio Promises More Subway Cops Amid Safety Fears, Feud

NEW YORK CITY — Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged 250 more NYPD officers in the subway amid mounting concerns about safety and continuing feud with MTA brass.

The special deployment is in addition to 2,500 cops regularly covering transit and 500 officers who are part of a recent "surge," de Blasio said.

"Putting all these pieces together, it’ll be the largest NYPD transit deployment in over 25 years,” he said.

The announcement follows a spate of high-profile attacks on the subway and MTA officials' increasingly vocal calls for more cops to assuage riders' safety fears.

It drew favorable reviews from Patrick Foye, MTA's CEO, and Sarah Feinberg, who heads city transit.

"We believe it will help address the serious issue of crime and harassment in the subways,” Foye said.

But Gov. Andrew Cuomo didn't miss the opportunity to needle de Blasio — his long-time nemesis.

Cuomo repeated his refrain that crime is a major problem in the city and in the MTA.

"To the extent the mayor has acknowledged that crime is a problem in the subways, I say 'amen,'" he said.

"Crime is a major problem in the city," he said. "Crime is a major problem in the MTA."

De Blasio and other city and police officials have accused MTA brass, along with Cuomo, of fearmongering over subway safety. Subway crime remains at low levels and the city has already committed record numbers of police officers into the system, they argued.

But Sarah Feinberg, city transit's interim director, harshly shot back over de Blasio's assertion that riders feel safe.

"He's a 6-foot-7-inch man walking around the subway system with armed security, right?" she said Sunday on CBS7's Up Close With Bill Ritter. "That's just not how the rest of us go through life."

Feinberg on Monday recapped the mayor's progression from denying crime is an issue for riders to committing to do whatever it takes.

"I think the mayor hit the nail on the head today when he said this is what’s needed to bring the city back and to bring the economy back, and so we’re going to hold him to it,” she said.

The 250-officer deployment de Blasio unveiled still falls short of what MTA officers pressed for by hundreds of officers.

De Blasio emphasized that NYPD officers will be deployed "in the right places at the right time."

He also pressed for MTA to step up and hire officers for its own police force — a move they approved more than a year ago but haven't acted upon.

The city will train those MTA officers for free, he said.

“I’m simply saying we keep adding, they could do something more,” he said. “Why don’t they step up? They have a police force, we’ll train them for free. They could help out, why not join the effort?”

Foye said MTA has hired 400 additional officers since it received federal stimulus funds. About 100 of those officers will be dedicated to the subway system, he said.