Gov. Kathy Hochul has condemned President Donald Trump for sending troops into the streets of Washington, D.C., but she\u2019s in no rush to withdraw hundreds of National Guard soldiers posted in New York City\u2019s subway system on her orders.<\/p>\n
The Democratic governor first deployed about 750 National Guard soldiers to the subways in March 2024<\/a>. She said the guard members, along with police officers, would deter would-be criminals looking to enter the transit system.<\/p>\n That was nearly a year and a half before Trump, a Republican, invoked his federal authority and deployed the Guard<\/a> to address crime in the nation\u2019s capital. Hochul called that move \u201coverkill for a show of force.\u201d<\/p>\n In the governor\u2019s telling, the two deployments couldn\u2019t be more different: Trump is imposing his will on a city and taking control of its police force over the objection of its mayor<\/a>. The New York National Guard, on the other hand, is working in consultation with the NYPD and MTA.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ll stand by what I did \u2014 wildly different from the abusive power that Donald Trump is once again engaging in in our nation’s capital,\u201d Hochul told reporters in the Bronx earlier this week.<\/p>\n Hochul\u2019s initial decision to call in the Guard drew criticism from Republicans, who said she was stepping on the NYPD\u2019s toes. Advocates for subway riders accused her of unnecessarily militarizing the transit system and fueling perceptions that it\u2019s unsafe \u2014 as the Trump administration has claimed<\/a>.<\/p>\n The soldiers, in full uniform, are tasked with assisting officers who randomly check bags at certain subway stations. Riders are required to comply if they want to enter the station.<\/p>\n The National Guard has completed about 19,000 \u201cmissions\u201d in the subway system since March 2024, with each separate location each day counting as a mission, according to spokesperson Richard Goldenberg.<\/p>\n Last year, Hochul\u2019s budget division estimated the deployment would cost about $17 million a year. A spokesperson for the budget division this week said the costs are baked into a $45 million increase in the current state budget<\/a>, for a post-9\/11 military task force known as Empire Shield.<\/p>\n Hochul told reporters in Albany on Tuesday that the Guard has been \u201cscaled back in different ways\u201d as the NYPD ramped up its presence on the subways in recent months. But she did not specify how, and the total number of soldiers remains the same as it was a year ago, according to the National Guard. Hochul temporarily added another 250 soldiers to the mix in December<\/a> while highlighting a drop in subway crime.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, National Guard troops have been spotted in stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, including at Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center, 149th Street-Grand Concourse and West 4th Street-Washington Square.<\/p>\n Hochul\u2019s initial deployment has since been supplemented with a new surge of police officers, with the state partially bankrolling the deployment of NYPD officers on each subway train during overnight hours<\/a>. Major subway crimes have continued to decline in recent months.<\/p>\n According to the MTA<\/a>, major felony crimes in the subway system dropped 8% in July 2025 compared to the previous July, all while average daily ridership increased from 3.4 million to 3.9 million. Citywide, major crime fell 5.6% over the same period, according to the NYPD.<\/p>\n Danny Pearlstein, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Riders Alliance, which advocates for New York City\u2019s transit riders, said it\u2019s difficult to attribute the drop in subway crime to any one policy amid the overall decrease in crime. He\u2019s criticized Hochul\u2019s National Guard deployment from the start<\/a>, arguing the presence of camouflaged troops could inflame tensions with members of the public.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we’ve seen in the past weeks in D.C. the real dangers of trumping up crime and militarizing urban spaces,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not something that New Yorkers want to see.\u201d<\/p>\n