A Queens City Councilman on Thursday pointed the finger at Mayor Bill de Blasio for the dramatic surge in subway graffiti since 2014 revealed in a Post exposé this week.
“The return of subway graffiti was to be expected and is consistent with the de Blasio administration’s permissive march toward the very worst days of NYC,” said Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens) whose district includes an MTA train yard that’s become a hot-spot for spray paint vandals.
“The big question is just how far will the city regress in the next two years,” said Holden, a prominent critic of de Blasio’s push to reduce the city’s jail population.
While the MTA is a state agency, responsibility for patrolling its subways and other city facilities falls primarily on city police officers.
As The Post revealed, graffiti incidents on the subway system have risen significantly from five years ago, when they hovered around 200 per year.
The agency recorded 619 such incidents in 2018 and 537 so far this year, incident reports show.
The Fresh Pond Yard in Holden’s Ridgewood district provides vandals easy access to subway cars via the roof of a nearby tire shop, sources say.
The site is a regular nuisance for Holden and his constituents, who allege that a parking lot on the western end of the property has essentially become a garbage dump.
The gated entrance to the area known as Fresh Pond Junction, the Queens site where M trains are kept while out of service.Gregory P. MangoA de Blasio rep batted away the criticism.
“We’re the safest big city on the US because we have the finest police department in the world,” City Hall spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie said in a statement. “We brought neighborhood policing to the subway system this year to drive crime down even further underground.”
But critics noted that graffiti-covered cars don’t leave residents feeling very safe.
“Subway graffiti reminds us all of the decay our city once faced, and I wish policy makers were more aware of that,” Councilman Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island) said.
An MTA rep said transit officials are working directly with police to identify graffiti artists and locations.
“We meet with NYPD monthly to discuss those areas under their jurisdiction and identify patterns and trends that may be helpful for our personnel to know about when out in the field,” spokesman Andrei Berman told The Post.
“These graffiti incidents ultimately hurt our millions of customers with every dollar directed toward cleaning up graffiti detracting from funding better spent on essential priorities.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office declined to comment about the graffiti spike.
