fter 22 years with Transit’s District 1, Pete Palumbo can say he’s seen more than subway fares going up. Some of the things he’s seen have been good, some bad, and some agonizingly unchanged.

In the first category?

“Well, the overall drop in the crime rate in the subways and stations,” says the 44-year-old Ozone Park native. “I think any statistics you find will back up that there have been fewer and fewer pickpockets every year. And you don’t get as many lush-workers, either.”

To what does he attribute this?

“A combination of things. First of all, you’ve got more cops on the trains and in the stations. And that means not just bodies in blue, but more officers who are likely to recognize a perp on his way through the turnstile for a day’s work. Then you got the trains themselves. Sure, they can always get better, but they’re a lot cleaner and brighter than they used to be, and that has its own domino effect. The cleaner the trains, the more likely more people are going to use them. And the more people you got in them, the less vulnerable some guy dozing off is to a lush-worker. How do you cut away a whole pocket when you have a dozen people staring at you? I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it’s much less likely.”

As far as Palumbo is concerned, the main target of further operations against pickpockets should be the #1 line. “It’s got too many attractions for thieves and too many distractions for riders. You got all the crowds boarding and getting out at Penn Station, Times Square, Columbus Circle and Lincoln Center. When people are thinking only about the connections they have to make or the show they’re about to see, they get a little careless about keeping an eye on their pockets or bags. Then the pickpocket himself can skip off in the middle of the same crowds or just wait till he gets to 72nd Street and switch off to an express. I can’t imagine a more fertile field for pickpockets in the city.”

As for recent polls indicating that there has been a relentless rise in the number of sexual assaults underground, Palumbo can only throw up his hands. “You’ll notice those same surveys show that the overwhelming majority of people don’t report it when they’ve been groped or brushed up against. We can only act when we know something’s gone on.”

When he turns to some of the things that have gotten worse, the PBA delegate says he can’t help but start with the contract situation. “Even before I got out of the Academy in December 1984, I thought of myself as a cop. As a kid you couldn’t tear me away from the Liberty Avenue handball courts near the 106 Precinct. I was always hanging out with the guys there. So no big shock to anybody in my family when I took the test and joined the NYPD. But you also had expectations that you’d always be paid what you were putting your neck on the line for. And that hasn’t happened.”

The Staten Island-based father of three also points to the merger of Transit with the city police as another development that has created a number of negatives.

“I know all their reasons for putting everybody together, but the funny thing is that by putting the units together, they made it harder for the cops themselves to be together. There used to be a closeness in Transit you don’t have anymore. Guys would be on the job 20 years and more. You knew everybody. Now you can count on the fingers of one hand the people who’ve been working Transit that long from the same command. It’s in the door and out the door.”

According to Palumbo, the quality of the new Transit officers isn’t what it should be, either. “I don’t blame them for it. Even the ones who are a little full of themselves don’t exactly get nudged in another direction. They’re given their graduation handshake and thrown out into the city. That’s just not good enough. Once upon a time, they were serious in the Department about the Field Training Officer program. You had to stick to your mentor until you had your street alphabet down and memorized. But they don’t seem to care about that kind of thing anymore. That’s a loss for the Department, for the rookies who could have benefited from it, and — you hope not — for the public.”

In the crime area, he notes the increase in homelessness and, inevitably, the subway as a theater for terrorism. “A lot of times the two of them are related. Whenever you get somebody reporting a mysterious package being left in a subway car, you know the odds are pretty good that it’s something left behind by one of the homeless. Of course you can’t approach it that way, but more often that not, that’s what it turns out to be.”

And the things that have remained inexplicably the same?

Palumbo taps the radio he’s holding. “It’s really hard to believe, but these are more or less the same radios we were given back in the 1980s. And that means one dead spot after another. Especially in the subways, you can go a long way getting nothing but static. And suppose somebody needs the EMS in a life-or-death situation? Suppose the cop himself is in danger and needs backup? We can send a guy to the moon, but we can’t supply city cops with radios that are dependable! Wouldn’t you think that at least one member of the brass down in Police Plaza would have made that a priority over the last 20 years?”

Failing to find that official, Palumbo says he can only hope he won’t ever have to attend the dire results of faulty equipment. “Everybody has war stories about a worst moment on the job. A shooting, some infant turned blue, some other horrible situation. But the worst moments for me will always be the police funerals. They make you angry, they make you feel vulnerable. You don’t wish that feeling on anybody. I have a 16-year-old son, Vincent, and that’s why I haven’t encouraged him to join the Department. What am I going to say if he wants to join? But for now I just want him to do well at school and not have to think about things like cop funerals. Life’s long enough for thinking about things like that.”

In addition to Vincent, Palumbo says most of his leisure time is given over to his daughters — Emily (13) and Michelle (11). “Back in those days around the handball courts,” he muses, “I thought about having great kids and making a lot of money. One out of two isn’t bad, right?” — Donald Dewey