Kathy Hochul dismisses NYer concerns on violent crime wave as ‘sense of fear’

Gov. Kathy Hochul says New Yorkers senses are working overtime when it comes to crime.

Hochul on Monday became the latest Democratic politician to downplay New Yorkers’ worries over subway and street crime amid a surge in violent attacks — chalking it up to a few “high-profile” crimes that have “created a sense of fear in people’s minds.”

And her dismissive comments came just days after Mayor Eric Adams characterized the crime concerns as a “perception” problem.

“And what I can do is my New York Transit, MTA transit police — I can bring them in and have them be fortifying our main transit hubs,” Hochul said in response to a reporter who asked about the “Cops, Cameras, Care” subway-safety program she announced Saturday with Adams.

“All it is is a cooperative effort to respond to, you know, the high-profile instances which have created a sense of fear in people’s minds,” she said. “I think that’s going to make people feel a lot better when they see that.”

The comments echoed last week’s controversial assertion by Adams that media coverage of recent subway attacks was causing riders to experience the “perception of fear” underground.

And they came just two days after The Post exclusively revealed the chilling video of a wild melee on an A train in Far Rockaway, Queens, where 15-year-old Jayjon Burnett was fatally shot on Oct. 14.

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Three days later, Heriberto Quintana, 48, became the ninth straphanger killed this year when he fell in front of an F train after getting punched in the face during an evening rush-hour argument on a platform in Queens’ Jamaica station.

And on Sunday, the mother of server David Martin, 32, said her son was “completely traumatized” and “wants to kill himself” since getting shoved to the tracks in a random attack Friday afternoon in Brooklyn’s Myrtle-Wyckoff station.

Citywide, major crimes are up 30.4% this year through Sunday, compared to the same period last year, although murders and shootings are down 14.3% and 14.6%, respectively, according to official NYPD data.

But the governor — who now finds herself in a neck-and-neck race for a full term against get-tough-on-crime Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin — instead Monday highlighted recent declines in the rates of murders and shootings statewide and “8,000 guns off the streets in one year” as reasons why New Yorkers shouldn’t be scared.

“I deal with real facts and I deal with people’s fear. And I address both,” she said.

“The real facts are, is that we’ve been so aggressive about this, driving down gun violence with getting guns off the streets and all these measures.”

At another point, Hochul got defensive when a reporter asked if she’d pivoted to the critical issue of crime so late in the campaign due to the ground she’s been losing to Zeldin in the polls.

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“If there is a fair assessment of what has been going on, it’s been a continuum of informing the public on what we’ve been doing,” she said.

“I don’t think it is accurate characterization to say we just started talking about crime…I am not letting the political theater out there affect what we’ve done. This is not a new issue for me and I think that’s well-established.”

During a nearly simultaneous news conference at which he was endorsed by the city Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, Zeldin blasted Hochul’s subway safety plan as “a day late, a dollar short.”

Zeldin accused Hochul of waiting to put more cops underground “until the day after” a stunning new poll on Friday showed him edging past her and plunging their race into a dead heat ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

“OK, first off: we’ve been talking about this for a long time — for a long time,” Zeldin said near the foot of the Queens bridge to the Rikers Island jail complex.

“But you want to take it one step further. You have a real issue in the NYPD of people who are leaving the force. So what you have to do is actually hire more NYPD — just like how you have to hire more correctional officers.”

Zeldin attacked Hochul’s plan for relying on 1,200 added police overtime shifts daily and two new, 25-bed psychiatric units to help mentally ill people move out of the subway and into homeless shelters.

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“What Kathy Hochul should be saying is that what we need to do is to increase the ranks of the NYPD,” he said.

“We need to have more people in uniform and we need more plainclothes people on the streets and subways, as well. But instead, she wants to half-ass it.”

Zeldin also faulted Hochul for proposing a mere 50 beds for “all of the emotionally disturbed persons in the city of New York.”

“Not 500, no 5,000 — 50 beds,” he said.

“You need far more beds. You need far more NYPD officers. You need far more corrections officers.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General Letitia James — who joined Hochul at the Albany event — tried to walk back her recent remark that officials “need to address a wide range of issues, including, but not limited, to looking at bail reform.”

“What I said last week in Buffalo was that we cannot look at bail reform in isolation,” James said in response to a question from The Post.

“We need to look at a wide range of other issues, including, but not limited to, the mental health system, the lack of pretrial services, the  lack of probation officers, the lack of correctional officers and the list goes on and on.”

Additional reporting by Larry Celona