New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is calling for more resources to help homeless people and those struggling with mental illness in response to concerns regarding safety on the subway.

Williams says that more police on the trains is not the solution to the crime problem.

“The catchall of throwing police at every problem historically not only doesn’t work in the long term, it creates other problems,” Williams says. “What are they doing now in the subway system? Can we look at where they’re patrolling, how they’re being used? But what’s not in the subway system? All the other resources we’ve talked about, so how about sending those resources?”

The public advocate says adding more police is a lazy response, but Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city is adding 250 officers on special deployment.

Those officers are added on top of a previous 3,000 members of the NYPD. “We’re going to take officers and put them in the right places in the subway at the right time,” de Blasio says. “Particularly at peak times of ridership.”

The announcement comes as subways are going 24/7 for the first time in a year.

The MTA also says it is launching a marketing campaign to encourage New Yorkers to get back on the subways, promising a cleaner and more reliable service than before the pandemic