The day after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a plan to deploy National Guard soldiers and State Police troopers in the New York City subway system, commuters expressed mixed feelings about whether the extra vigilance would make them feel any safer.
Some people applauded the move on Thursday, while others said they were skeptical about the need for more law enforcement and concerned about having armed soldiers check their bags.
A pair of National Guard troops with rifles walked down the sloping hallway between the Fulton Street and World Trade Center subway stations in Lower Manhattan late on Thursday morning, past the gelato stand where Aileen Morales works.
Ms. Morales, 31, who travels there by subway from her home in the Bronx, said that she had developed a “poker face” for her commutes in the last two years as a form of self-protection. She welcomed the additional security in a system that feels unsafe to her.
“You don’t know who’s going to come on the train now,” Ms. Morales said. “That’s the scary part.”
Her co-worker, Jim Lozada, 29, agreed, and said that an agitated man punched him in the ribs on the subway last year after he asked the man to stop shoving other commuters.
Ms. Morales was less keen on the idea of having her bags randomly searched by troops, calling it “kind of an invasion of privacy.” But she sounded resigned to the possibility.
