It was a walk on the wild side.
Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD brass got a firsthand look at the desolate homeless wasteland inside the Big Apple subway system in an eye-opening overnight tour of the city’s transit vagrant crisis.
With The Post tagging along, the mayor and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch joined a crew from a city multi-agency outreach effort at the 34th Street/Herald Square station, with staffers coming upon a total of 96 troubled drifters — many of them struggling with mental health issues.
But the late-night outreach teams face an uphill battle — only 16 of the vagrants offered help accepted it, including a shoeless man taken to a shelter and a woman who was hospitalized.
Most, however, shunned the helping hand.
“Everyone must do their part and we need Albany to step up,” Adams said. “If we’re on the ground talking about what we need on the ground, they need to assist us by giving us what we need.
“If we’re saying we need to codify around involuntary removal they shouldn’t be pushing back because we’re out here. Give us the tools that we’re saying we need so we can turn the corner on this issue.
“This is inhumane,” he added. “It requires determination.”
The comments came as state lawmakers weigh passage of the Supportive Interventions Act, which specifies that a person in need of medical or psychiatric care can be forcibly removed from the streets.
Adams launched a “tough love” initiative in 2022 that authorized cops to take troubled vagrants against their will if they were in need of assistance — and touted the results late last year.
Yet it is unclear how strongly City Hall enforced the initiative, which presents a potential dilemma for cops who could be accused of excessive force for simply enforcing the mayor’s instructions — while this week’s walk-along at Herald Square suggests the initiative has fallen short.
Adams was tagging along with the city’s Partnership Assistance for Transit Homelessness, or PATH, team, which ventures across Manhattan from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. in an outreach effort with staffers from the NYPD, the Department of Homeless Services and health department as part of the crew.
Also with the group was NYPD Chief of Transit Joseph Gulotta.
Herald Square has notoriously been a favored haunt for the city’s homeless and mentally ill.
The tour comes just days after Daniel Penny, a 26-year-old ex-Marine, was acquitted of criminal charges in the subway chokehold death of troubled vagrant Jordan Neely — a symptom of a failed system.
“We did a disservice years ago when we closed our psychiatric wards,” Adams said. “We have excellent homeless outreach, and if we don’t address this it’s going to elevate and it’s just going to get worse.
“In a minute this could turn violent,” he added.
Adams and city police officials note that overall crime has dipped in the transit system and in the city as a whole — but acknowledge that it hasn’t been enough to change the perception of most New Yorkers.
“Arrests are up, crime is down in the city,” Tisch said. “There is still a perception of disorder, and the mayor has launched a number of initiatives — this being a prime example — to get at those things that create the feeling of disorder in the city.”
City officials said PATH has made contact with about 5,300 homeless and troubled New Yorkers since it launched, with 1,700 receiving care and services, with about 8,000 placed in shelters and 700 in housing.
“What you’re seeing here is the perfect example of the city realizing that you can’t arrest your way out of a problem,” she said. “This is the perfect example of the police partnering with clinicians and providing care for people who need care.”