“Incidents like that shake the entire city. We know the subway; millions of people ride it per day. When something like that happened. It shakes the entire city right down to its core,” Chief Gulotta told amNewYork.
The shocking incident occurred at 9:40 a.m. on April 11, when former battle rapper Anthony Griffin owent on the attack inside Grand Central Station. Starting along the 7 line, he slashed an 84-year-old man in the head, causing a severe laceration.
Griffin then allegedly made his way to the uptown platform on the 4/5/6 line, where he continued his rampage. He sliced a 65-year-old man in the head, resulting in a skull fracture, and left a 70-year-old woman bloody after cutting open her shoulder.
Gulotta said he was at home at the time and immediately responded.
“I was on my laptop. I actually saw the job alert come up, switched my radio on, and was actually listening to it live. I responded right from the scene. I was monitoring it as it was happening, was right on top of it. For me, this is a 24/7 operation,” Gulotta said. “We don’t wait.”
Eyewitnesses immediately say they ran to cops stationed in the area, who confronted him as he claimed to be Lucifer, according to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. The detectives, who were on a paid overtime post, ultimately shot Griffin dead after he refused to put down the weapon and charged at them.
Gulotta lauded the cops who responded to the incident and their swift action.
“They do it every day. They handle jobs like that without incident most of the time. Our cops just do a really great job in the subway. They’re out there. They’re doing exactly what we’re asking to do,” Gulotta said.
Subway crime drops despite high-profile incidents
While Saturday’s incident was disturbing, police officials also say it is an anomaly. According to department data, 2025 was the safest year in the transit system since 2009.
However, Gulotta admitted that the NYPD faces challenges in the first few months of 2026 due to the extreme cold weather that sent more people underground.
“When we take a look at January and February, we had a lot of challenges. That was one of the coldest weathers we’ve had in a long time. I mean, they were life-threatening temperatures that we reached some nights on the overnight that was really a challenge, and then some of the highest snowfalls,” Gulotta said. “We saw a rise in crime, specifically the robberies as well. We put an additional 175 police officers into the system, and we stabilized it. And right now, we’re down 1.2% considering that historically, last year was one of the best years ever recorded outside the pandemic.”
Gulotta told amNewYork that with the aid of the additional cops and their strategic placement aimed at preventing violence and responding immediately when incidents occur, it has yielded positive results. Despite the initial uptick, which saw an increase in youth-on-youth robberies, crime in the subway is down so far this year by 5.7%, with over 1,700 fewer reported crimes than in 2025.
“It evolves every single day. Like I said, we stay on top of this every day as trends change, as we see different crimes. A good example would be this winter, especially in January, February, we saw a large influx of clothing being stolen. It was juvenile-related, it was school crime,” Gulotta explained. That was something we had to adjust. There were groups stealing jackets, and that was one of the things we did. Our officers were catching them live while they were doing it because we were deploying to it.”
