In effort to curb subway crime, NYC mayor asks residents to send pix of police officers on phones

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is asking residents to send pictures of police officers staring at their cellphone instead of looking for subway crime – an effort to ensure those added to NYPD's subway-system patrol to curb a crime surge are doing their job. 

"We are going to start taking very aggressive actions to make sure police are patrolling our subway system and and not patrolling their iPhones," he said Wednesday, about two weeks after the worst shooting the NYC subway history. "You are going to see a visual difference in policing in the next couple of weeks."

Adams is asking commuters to take pictures of on-duty cops scrolling their iPhones and send them to him.

"You see that, send me a photo and I will be at that station. I am disappointed in the deployment of transit police personnel," also said Adams, a former transit officer who says he used to patrol alone on subways.

Now it is common to see a group of transit officers hanging around together by a booth or subway entrance. 

Beyond the April 12 shooting at a Brooklyn subway station in which 10 people were wounded, the city's subway system has been beset since roughly the start of the pandemic by a surge in crime – from juveniles jumping fare gates to a homeless person earlier this year fatally pushing a woman in front of a subway train.

Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch says that officers were ordered to carry and use their phones to document the work they do each day. 

"Every form we are required to fill out and every alert we receive comes through the phone," he said. "If there’s a problem with cops using the phone on duty, NYPD management should change the policies and go back to pen and paper."

Last month, Adams also told New Yorkers to stand back if they're recording police officers.

"If your iPhone can’t catch that picture at a safe distance then you need to upgrade your iPhone," he also said. "Stop being on top of my police officers while they carry on their jobs," he said. It's "not acceptable and won’t be tolerated."