A vigil was placed outside the 207th Station Monday, mourning two people experiencing homelessness who were fatally stabbed in the subway over the weekend.

“We live here. We’re from Inwood, of course, this really hurt everybody," said Jecelia Rodriguez, who attended the vigil.

What You Need To Know

  • NYPD is deploying an additional 500 officers to the subway system following fatal stabbings and a spate of high-profile attacks on riders

  • MTA officials said they want another thousand officers in the system, on top of the 500 additional NYPD officers

  • Overall felony crime fell in 2020, largely due to fewer grand larceny crimes, like pickpocketing

The stop is the northern end of the A line, where 44-year-old Claudine Roberts was found Inside a subway car. She died at a hospital.

"We need the police, there should be more, please," Dulce Colado, an Inwood resident, said.

Two other stabbings in the system, both non-fatal, also occurred in northern Manhattan.

All four of the stabbing victims were homeless. A Brooklyn man has been arrested and is being held without bail.

Rigoberto Lopez, 21, was charged with first degree murder, second degree murder and two counts of attempted murder in a Manhattan court Monday.

Police say Lopez is mentally ill and has spent time in a hospital psychiatric ward.

The attacks, the latest in a series of high-profile crimes, have unnerved riders.

"We need our customers and staff to feel confident and safe as they use the system," said Sarah Feinberg, interim president of NYC Transit.

MTA officials joined with Gov. Andrew Cuomo Monday to pressure Mayor Bill de Blasio to put more police in the subway.

The city has pledged to assign 500 more officers to the system. The MTA wants another thousand, lifting the NYPD's Transit Bureau to nearly 4,000 cops, the same as in the 1990s.

"Crime is a problem in the MTA, crime is a problem in New York City. Generally, crime is a problem in the nation, predominantly in urban areas," Cuomo said. "If we are going to get the economy back, we have to address the problem."

Felony crime in the transit system is down, mainly because the number of crimes like pick pocketing has fallen, the result of far fewer people riding trains in the pandemic.

But the six murders in the system last year were the most since at least 1997.

"Now, I’m hearing from riders that we'd rather see police rather than cleaners and I think we can do both. Se should be able to do both," Andrew Albert, an MTA board member, said.

But Louis Anemone, a former NYPD chief of department and MTA security director, says policing the subway is more than just bodies in uniform.

“That’s the old scarecrow effect, it really doesn’t work," Anemone said.

One strategy from his time at the NYPD, Train Order Maintenance Sweeps, patrols of more than a half dozen officers systematically moving through trains and stations, creating a sense of order.

“They enter every car of that train so you might have seven or eight officers with a sergeant stepping into the car of the train while it’s at the platform, looking around and asking people, ‘Is everything OK? Are there any problems?’” he said.

MTA officials says they've installed more surveillance cameras, increased the MTA's police force, and begun tracking crimes in the system in real time. But they say the system still needs more NYPD officers, and fast.