Subway Crime Declining, New Transit Figures Show

Paralleling a citywide decline in reported crimes, subway crime over the first nine months of this year decreased by 12.1 percent from a year earlier, the New York City transit police announced yesterday

The drop continued a trend that has seen crime in the city's vast underground transit system go down markedly during the last three years. Over all, crime rates have fallen by 35.9 percent since 1990, when there were nearly 14,000 felonies in the subways, compared with about 8,916 for the first nine months of this year.

Most significantly, the transit police and police experts pointed out yesterday, the incidence of robbery -- the crime most associated with the sense of danger that commuters often feel -- continued to fall. In 1992 there were 4,749 subway robberies in the first nine months. Through September of this year, there were 4,122, a 13.2 percent decrease. And, transit police officials said, robberies had decreased by more than 40 percent from 1990, when there were 6,946 over the same time period.

Citywide reported crime for the first five months of this year was down 5.8 percent from the corresponding period last year, according to the latest statistics released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A 'Holistic' Approach

While acknowledging that the transit system had reaped the residual benefits from a decline in reported crimes throughout the city, the Chief of the transit police, Michael F. O'Connor, credited what he called a more "holistic" approach to dealing with crime in the subways, akin to the problem-solving that the New York City Police Department practices as part of community policing.

He said tactics included going after fare beaters who, once through the turnstiles, often become muggers and worse. And, he said, the Transit Police Department's warrant squad unit routinely goes to the home of suspects to make sure that they go to court to respond to desk-appearance tickets.

"The idea is to have a flexible strategy that allows you to increase uniformed officers in certain locations and decrease them where it's called for," Chief O'Connor said. A Stamp of Approval

The transit police tactics received a stamp of approval from Thomas A. Reppetto, the head of the Citizens Crime Commission, a private organization. He said the restoration of decoys and fare-evasion sweeps had aided in the fight against crime in the subways, which only a few years ago seemed intransigent.

The decrease in every category, from grand larceny to rape, came as a relief to a police force that has had to work constantly against a poor public image and to spar for the spotlight with the gargantuan N.Y.P.D. In fact, the transit police, with 4,300 officers, is, on its own, the seventh largest police department in the country.

While the transit police increasingly over the last few years have deployed more and more officers above ground in patrol cars, the bulk of its work deals with underground crimes that take place on moving trains or on desolate subway platforms.

Subway crime seems to have gone down in double-digit percentages across the board, with a couple of exceptions. District 3, which covers an area north of 86th Street on the West Side of Manhattan, experienced 836 crimes through September, up from 829 for the period last year. And in District 11, which the transit police describes as the west side of the Bronx, crime has stayed essentially the same, with total crimes going from 573 in the nine months last year to 572 in the period this year.