NYPD Chief of Transit Michael Kemper is stepping down, Gothamist has learned.
Kemper filed for retirement on Thursday, according to a document obtained by Gothamist. His retirement will be effective on Sept. 27.
After more than three decades at the NYPD, Kemper took over the police department’s $250 million transit division in December 2022. His predecessor, Jason Wilcox, stepped down after less than a year in the role.
Neither Kemper nor the NYPD responded to an inquiry for this story.
Earlier this year, Kemper and MTA officials scrambled to improve public perceptions of safety in the transit system after four high-profile subway shootings — two in the Bronx and two in Brooklyn, including one at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn Street station, a notable transit hub.
Mayor Eric Adams has made cracking down on subway crime a chief focus since he took office. To that end, Kemper deployed more than 1,000 additional police officers into the subways last year, on top of the 2,500 officers already working in the NYPD’s transit bureau.
NYPD overtime spend on extra officers in the subway went from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million last year, Gothamist previously reported. The surge of officers corresponded to a 2% drop in major crimes across the subway system, such as robbery, rape and murder.
But the number of tickets and arrests for fare evasion skyrocketed. Fare jumping arrests have more than doubled since Adams took office, and fare jumping tickets have spiked 160%, Gothamist previously reported. It’s part of a larger crackdown on low-level crimes under Adams that has disproportionately affected Black and Latino New Yorkers, according to NYPD data. At the Atlantic Avenue L train stop in Brownsville, police made 40 times more fare evasion arrests than average.
Kemper told Gothamist in an interview last December that targeting fare jumpers saves the MTA money and brings “order” to the subways.
“It’s about correcting behavior,” Kemper said at the time. “Stopping fare evaders sets the tone of law and order.”
“No Transit Bureau chief has ever been a better partner than Michael Kemper in creating strategies to reduce subway crime and improve quality of life for riders and transit workers,” MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said in a statement. “He leaves this role with a legacy that includes the lowest number of subway robberies since record keeping began, and fewer serious transit crimes overall than before the pandemic.”
Kemper joined the NYPD in 1991 and made about $240,000 last year, according to city records.