Court cases for sleeping, spreading out on the subway surge under NYPD crackdown
Chris Madigan remembers his feet were so cold they hurt. He had no shoes on — only socks — when NYPD officers stopped him for sleeping on the subway in the 86th Street station on Feb. 22. He said police escorted him onto Broadway in handcuffs on a cold night, just hours before a blizzard dropped nearly 2 feet of snow on New York City.
The 44-year-old Bronx native said he’s spent the last several years sleeping on benches and friends’ couches. Police body camera footage viewed by Gothamist shows him sprawled across a row of subway seats on the night he was arrested. Two officers tried to wake him up — calmly at first, then pulling him by his jacket off the train.
“I remember waking up, and I remember being dragged,” he said.
Madigan is one of a growing number of New Yorkers who ended up in court after police caught them occupying more than one seat in public transit or lying on the floor of a station in recent months, according to a Gothamist data analysis.
State court data show there were 591 cases last year in which lying down or taking up more than one seat in public transit was the most serious charge. That’s up more than 3,000% compared to the year prior, when there were just 19 of these cases. Court cases for the first three months of 2026 have already exceeded the number during the same period in 2025.
