A security firm launched by Mayor Eric Adams’ top public safety director scored a portion of the MTA contract to send unarmed guards to patrol subway turnstiles as part of a new crackdown on fare-beating, The Post has learned.
Rent-a-cops for the program are being provided by City Safe Partners, which Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks founded in 2015, his resume shows, after he suddenly retired from the NYPD months earlier amid a sprawling federal corruption probe.
Banks did not disclose any relationship with City Safe Partners on mandatory ethics filings after Adams hired him, records show.
However, he continues to describe himself as currently employed by the firm on his resume, which he has updated since returning to City Hall to reflect his deputy mayor role, while still listing the City Safe role as “Aug. 2015-Present” right under it.
A Post reporter spotted the City Safe security guards working at the bustling West 4th Street station on Monday.
“While Deputy Mayor Banks was a co-founder of City Safe, he left the company years ago and currently has no involvement,” said City Hall press secretary Fabien Levy. “He thanks the paper for notifying him that the company is still in business.”
Levy maintained that Banks divested from the company but declined to provide any additional details.
City Safe spokeswoman Jennefer Witter said Banks “hasn’t been affiliated with the company since July 2018 and thus, there has been zero involvement between Banks and the company and its business dealings since then.”
The MTA said late Monday the new guards are part of a $16 million effort that the agency tacked onto an existing contract it has with a Pennsylvania-based conglomerate, Allied United, which is managing the program.
Allied, in turn, contracted with Banks’ old firm for the unarmed guards.
Allied United did not respond to requests for comment.
Adams’ response to the surge in violence underground — which Banks oversees in his City Hall role — has come under intense scrutiny following nine homicides on the subways so far this year, the highest tally in a generation.
The subway crime wave has also become a defining issue in the governor’s race between incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and her Republican challenger, Rep. Lee Zeldin, of Long Island, with the governor largely avoiding the issue until recently when Zeldin struck a chord with voters concerned for their own safety, polls have shown.
Hochul and the state control the MTA and provide security for its suburban operations and railroads. But in New York City, the NYPD is responsible for maintaining order underground.
And Adams has placed Banks at the center of his public safety apparatus, often ahead of Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell.
The two men are longtime friends who both served as cops and share the broken-windows policing philosophy of cracking down on quality-of-life offenses like fare beating, which in turn helps prevent violent crime and bolster confidence in public safety by enforcing a sense of civic order. That mode of policing was popularized by former NYPD Commissioner William Bratton.
However, Adams’ attempt to create public safety “omnipresence” has been hamstrung by a major staffing shortage at the NYPD Transit Division, which union officials say is more than 500 officers short of its authorized headcount.
City Hall and the NYPD have responded by requiring beat cops to include subway station checks as part of their routine patrols.
The administration has also rolled out social service teams — which include two cops, a nurse and a social worker — as part of a carrot-and-stick effort to encourage and cajole homeless and mentally ill New Yorkers from living underground and back into shelter and treatment.
Officials claim the program has resulted in more than 2,400 New Yorkers leaving the subways for city-run intakes, but they’ve repeatedly declined to say how many have opted to remain in shelter beds.
Under fire, Hochul and the MTA have also taken steps to bolster the city’s efforts.
Initially, in January, the governor promised the state would fund eight social services teams to bolster the city-led outreach effort and officials have exceeded that total with 10 deployed so far.
On top of the rent-a-cops, Hochul announced in October that 1,200 MTA Police officers would be redeployed to major city transit hubs – like Penn Station, Grand Central, Jamaica Station and Atlantic Terminal — to bolster the depleted NYPD Transit Division.
Zeldin argues the surge in cops is too little, too late from Hochul, who he said should have been far more aggressive in challenging liberal lawmakers in the Assembly and state Senate over New York’s controversial overhaul of criminal justice laws in 2019.
News of the City Safe arrangement comes just two months after Timothy Pearson — another public safety aide who is frequently spotted at City Hall with Banks — was caught working simultaneously for a Queens gambling company and the city government.
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton