After a series of assaults in the subways over the weekend — including a fatal stabbing of a man during a fight and attacks on three women who were slashed in the legs — the Police Department stepped up its presence in the system and arrested two men.

The incidents were unrelated, but they came at a time when riders remain fearful of crime on the mass transit system. Over the weekend, the police added 80 additional officers to the city’s subways and platforms to reassure riders, said Michael M. Kemper, the chief of the transit police.

“That perception is real to so many,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to combat — this overwhelming uniformed presence in the subway system is what we’re doing to reduce that fear and that perception.”

In the first incident, Tavon Silver, 32, of the Bronx, who had survived a subway stabbing a year ago, was killed during an early-morning fight on the 4 train on Saturday. Claude White, 33, was arrested on Monday and charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the killing, according to the police.

On Sunday afternoon, three women were slashed in the legs in two separate incidents, and on Tuesday, Kemal Rideout, 28, was arrested and charged with three counts of felony assault in the stabbings. The wounds were not life-threatening, the police said.

Both arrests were made by the same team of five plainclothes officers, who identified the men after comparing their faces with images captured by Metropolitan Transportation Authority cameras.

Mr. White, who has a criminal record that includes a robbery conviction, was arrested at 10:40 a.m., about 55 hours after he stabbed Mr. Silver in the chest as the two men fought on the 4 train going southbound, the police said.

The men knew each other, and Mr. White said “it was a dispute over narcotics,” said James Essig, the chief of detectives.

The officers who responded to a 911 call found Mr. Silver semiconscious and bleeding on the train in Union Square station at about 4 a.m. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to police.

Mr. White was arrested after he passed through a subway station door without paying, the police said.

Mr. Silver had been stabbed in the arm on the subway last June, when he got into a fight with a man who called him a homophobic slur. That stabbing was not related to Saturday’s killing, the police said.

Mr. Rideout was arrested on Tuesday, at 9:45 a.m., when the police saw him coming out of a bodega near East 122nd Street, the police said. He was charged in incidents that began on Sunday at 4:20 p.m., when a man holding what investigators believe was a shard of glass slashed “deep wounds” into the legs of two women who were on or near the platform of the 86th Street and Lexington Avenue station, the police said.

That attack, against a 19-year-old woman and a 48-year-old woman, occurred “without any provocation,” Chief Kemper said.

The man then boarded the 4 train heading southbound, where minutes later he slashed the legs of a 28-year-old woman who was sitting on the train, Chief Kemper said. That attack was also random, he said.

Janno Lieber, the chairman and chief executive of the M.T.A., said that while he was heartened by the arrests and statistics that indicate the rate of crime on the subway has stabilized, the attacks were “especially unnerving.”

“And it is unacceptable,” he said. “Nobody should feel afraid when going about their business in New York.”

Chief Kemper said arrests on the subway system are up 52 percent so far this year compared with last year while felony assaults have gone down about 4 percent.

The police have added about 1,000 officers to the system since last October, when Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the start of a safety initiative.

There “are no immediate plans” to take the 80 additional officers out of the system, Chief Kemper said.

Maria Cramer is a reporter on the Metro desk. Please send her tips, questions and complaints about the New York police and crime at [email protected]. @NYTimesCramer

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