The head of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Janno Lieber, said the uptick in violent subway crime is “in people’s heads,” and argued the transit system’s safety statistics are actually “positive.”

In a Monday interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” addressing New York City’s newly implemented traffic “congestion pricing,” Lieber brushed off concerns that many commuters have about taking the subway instead of driving. 

“Some of these high-profile incidents, you know, terrible attacks have gotten in people’s heads and made the whole system feel unsafe,” Lieber said, addressing the recent subway crimes, including an illegal immigrant burning a woman to death on a train, a man being pushed in front of an oncoming train by a random attacker, and a group of teens attempting to violently mug an elderly woman in a station.

According to Lieber, however, “The overall stats are positive.”

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“Last year we were actually at 12 and a half percent less crime than 2019, the last year before COVID,” the MTA chair and CEO said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) came under fire for making similar remarks, touting lower crime rates on the subway just hours after the woman who was set on fire while sleeping on the F train, later identified as 57-year-old Debrina Kawam, died at the Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn:

“In March, I took action to make our subways safer for the millions of people who take the trains each day,” Hochul wrote on X on December 22, the same day that Guatemalan national Sebastian Zapeta-Calil allegedly set Kawam ablaze in a seemingly random attack.

Since deploying the New York National Guard and installing cameras on the transit system, Hochul said that “crime is going down, and ridership is going up.”

Her controversial post was accompanied by photos of the governor shaking hands with cops and taking selfies on the subway. 

“Imagine someone u love is burned alive by an illegal criminal on the subway and kathy hochul is like omg calm down the subway is soooo safe lol here’s a selfie of me on one,” conservative commentator and New York City resident Ashley St. Clair replied: