Eric Adams likens new NYPD gun scanners in subways to JFK wanting man on the moon: ‘Our Sputnik moment’

The NYPD is set to start rolling out new technology that’ll scan straphangers for firearms in subway stations amid a wave of underground violence, Mayor Eric Adams said Thursday.

Hizzoner showed off a freestanding scanner manufactured by Evolv, a weapons detection company, at the busy Fulton Transit Center in Lower Manhattan as he touted details of a soon-to-be-implemented pilot program.

“This is our Sputnik moment,” Adams said. “Like when Kennedy said we’re going to put a man on the moon … Let’s bring on the scanners.”

The mayor wouldn’t say how many of the scanners will initially be set up in the subway system, or at which stations, when the program eventually gets underway in the coming months.

The exact logistics, too, weren’t immediately clear — including whether every straphanger will have to walk through the scanner immediately before or after the turnstile, or if there’s a chance they could just sidestep the detector altogether.

Critics were quick to rip the new tech, with law enforcement sources telling The Post the city should just invest in more cops instead.

“We don’t need more robots, we need cops. Not just for the trains, but for patrol and everywhere else. Robots will not fix anything,” one cop source said.

“[NYPD] is playing TSA now in the subways — just another inconvenience in the subway system,” another added.

During a demonstration of the new technology, Adams noted the NYPD would keep tabs on a screen as a commuter walks through the device. If a firearm is detected, the location of the gun will flash up orange — allowing cops to carry out a search of the person in that specific area.

The city’s Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters, Michael Gerber, acknowledged it was a New Yorkers right not to walk through the devices — but stopped short of saying whether a straphanger would still be allowed onto a train if they refused.

“If someone who is coming into the subway system, they see this machine, they turn around, they walk away, that’s their right. No one is required to go through the machine,” he said. “I want to be very clear, if someone walks away, that’s not probable cause, not reasonable suspicion, it’s nothing.”

Hizzoner added that the devices wouldn’t record a commuter’s facial recognition or biometrics, saying: “No items will be used to hold your face or your identification.”

Despite touting the new gun detectors Thursday, the pilot program won’t get underway until at least June because the city has to wait 90 days after publicly advertising its intent to use electromagnetic weapons detection systems due to the POST Act law.

Adams used the demonstration to call on other private tech companies to come forward with similar devices the Big Apple can use to crackdown on guns in the transit system as the pilot gets underway.

The Evolv scanners are already used in other city locations — including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, One Vanderbilt and CitiField stadium.

Separately, the mayor said the city would also begin hiring clinicians to help support the expansion of the MTA’s new Subway Co-Response Outreach Teams (SCOUT) teams — a program Gov. Kathy Hochul last month gave $20 million to boost.

Currently, there are two SCOUT teams of mental health clinicians who patrol the system and can intervene if a mentally ill New Yorker suffers a breakdown in a station.

The teams have gotten 90 people out of the transit system over the last three months — or roughly one person a day, MTA officials have said.

The city’s plans to crackdown on guns and tackle mental illness underground comes after a spate of recent violent attacks in the transit system, including the deadly shooting on a crowded train car in Brooklyn earlier this month.

On Monday, an innocent straphanger was allegedly shoved in front a train in Harlem by a 24-year-old Bronx man with a history of mental illness.

The number of felony assaults in the transit system jumped 53% last year from pre-pandemic times, with 570 such attacks in 2023 compared to 373 in 2019, the latest NYPD data show.

As of last Sunday, cops had seized 450 weapons — including 19 illegal guns — in the subway system this year, Adams said Thursday — up from the 261, including nine guns, found during the same period in 2023.