NYC Subway Sex Crimes Up, Perv Arrests Down: Report

NEW YORK, NY — "As New Yorkers face increasing delays in their morning and evening subway commute, the last thing any person should need to worry about is the threat of a sexual predator."

So begins a disturbing new report on a recent rise in sex crimes aboard the New York City subway system — and a corresponding dip in arrests. The report, called "Perverted Justice: How Subway Grinders Continue To Victimize New Yorkers," was released this week by the office of New York State Sen. Diane Savino, a Staten Island Republican, and pulls its data directly from the NYPD.

The report shows there were 52 percent more sex crimes reported on the subway last year than in 2014.

See also:

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This data might be thrown off a little by the fact that the MTA created a simple-to-use online form for reporting "unwanted sexual contact" on the subway halfway through 2014 — likely encouraging more victims to come forward.

That fact cannot, however, account for the 28 percent spike between 2015 and 2016, from 738 crimes to 941.

And the situation is getting even worse in 2017. At a time when most other types of crime are going down in NYC, misdemeanor sex crimes — including reports of groping and masturbating on the subway — are up 13 percent so far this year compared to the same time period last year, according to police.

By way of explanation, Dermot Shea, deputy commissioner of operations for the NYPD, said at a press conference this week that while it's "difficult to pin down" the reason for the 2017 spike in misdemeanor sex crimes, "If I was going to say one thing and broad-stroke it, it's the increased reporting, really, of what we're seeing — not necessarily increased acts." (In other words, he doesn't think the actual number of crimes is going up, just that more people are reporting them.)

"I think we've done a good job in the recent years," Shea said. And Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce added: "We have a deep focus on this."

But a rise in reporting wouldn't necessarily explain why, by Sen. Savino's calculations, the NYPD's subway perv arrest rate has been consistently dropping over the past three years. (See graph above.)

Police made arrests in around 65 percent of cases in 2014, according to the senator's report. By 2016, the arrest rate had dropped to 52 percent — meaning nearly half the city's suspected subway predators were able to evade cops.

Of course, Sen. Savino didn't just crunch all these numbers for nothing. She's hoping her new report drums up renewed support for a bill she wrote years ago, in 2014, that would make "forcible touching" — or groping, by far the most common type of sex crime reported on the subway — a class D felony instead of a misdemeanor, thus extending a convict's maximum jail sentence from 1 year to 7 years.

"It is imperative that Senator Savino’s legislation, S.3861, be voted on and passed by both houses of the legislature so that law enforcement has the tools necessary to stop these menacing predators," says the senator's new report. Read the full document here.

Lead photo courtesy of the NYPD. A hat tip to DNAinfo for spotting the report.