The NYPD is investigating video that shows three people climbing out of a manhole near Penn Station, a late-night scene that put sewer access back in focus in Manhattan. Police say the group came up on Seventh Avenue by 32nd Street last Tuesday at 4 a.m., and they are still looking for the three people seen in the August 18 incident.
That is why the clip is drawing attention now. It is not just another odd piece of street footage. It shows someone inside a closed city system built for wastewater and stormwater, then emerging in gear that included overalls and headlamps, in one of the busiest transit corridors in New York City.
Matt McCann, who said he has seen underground trespassers before, is part of what police describe as a pattern they are still trying to understand. Detectives believe many of the people caught on camera in these incidents are migrants searching for anything of value in the sewer system, and they have learned of a scavenger culture in places like Venezuela during the immigration crisis that began in 2022. The city’s sewer network stretches 7,400 miles and was built in the 1800s, which means a manhole is not a shortcut or a hiding place so much as access to a harsh underground system that was never meant for trespassers.
Officials say inspections after recent incidents found no threat to the infrastructure, which is the part that complicates the story. The danger was never the pipes alone. A DEP spokesperson said sewers can contain noxious and potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding risks and confined spaces, and city officials say sneaking into manholes is both illegal and extremely dangerous. That warning comes even as police review another set of images without an arrest in the latest case near Penn Station.
The pattern has already played out elsewhere. Earlier this summer, surveillance video captured small groups of people exiting the sewer system in Brooklyn and Queens. There were four arrests in previous incidents in Williamsburg and Gravesend in May, and those charged then told police they were scavenging for valuables. There was also at least one incident in Queens that led to an arrest, though charges were ultimately not pursued.
For now, the new Penn Station case leaves police with the same unanswered question as the earlier ones: what, exactly, people are doing underground when they disappear into the sewer system and come back up through a manhole in the middle of the city.
