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Matthew Yglesias has a post about fare evasion. I especially love this part:
I know he's moved away from Vox/Slate towards the center, but just this year, places like Philly and Oregon no longer allow the police to pull people over for broken lights because it is racist, and here is Mr Yglesias, literally advocating for more terry stops. I actually think it's a good thing: if both neolibs and neocons are trying to re-center and narrow down the Overton window, this thread might get slow and boring.
I think it's just generally bad policy to use minor crimes like that as a pretext for finding people with active warrants. It is detrimental to society as a whole.
First, you're mostly just going to catch the stupidest criminals this way. The smarter criminals will be able to evade capture for much longer. So we're only catching people who would have eventually been caught, anyways.
Second, stupid criminals will make stupid choices. They'll make the decision to run/fight more often than not. This means cops could get injured, or some dumb criminal (and many criminals are legitimately mentally retarded) will get hurt/killed. And today that could lead to city-wide protests that cause hundreds of millions in damages (from looting, vandalism, and just lost economic opportunity from businesses being closed and consumers staying away).
Third, as a political consequence, we end up with police pulling back, and stupid policies saying not to enforce quality of life crimes, and even some non-violent crimes (primarily drug and property crimes). And that's just going to make life worse for everyone.
Here's what a better system would be. We get a bunch of lowly paid people who issue small tickets to people who violate simple laws. Traffic and parking violations, fare evasion, jay walking, littering, etc. We put these people in stupid, non-threatening uniforms. They are instructed not to chase people, not to look for warrants, not to arrest people. If something goes wrong, they run. If a citizen ever lays hands on these individuals, we send in the real police to do a summary execution. Otherwise cops aren't involved in anything to do with those stops or enforcement of those laws.
We take cops, and instead of paying them $100k+/year to hopefully catch people with warrants and guns while enforcing petty crimes and civil violations, we send them to catch people with warrants by actually looking for the people who have warrants. And they can do things like respond to burglaries, stolen property complaints, things like that.
And this way, if cops end up killing someone, it likely won't be over some petty shit. And if riots do break out over that, politicians and citizens won't be targeting the quality of life enforcers. They can still operate and continue a constant level of enforcement, so that cities don't fall to shit.
It's absurd to pay police officers to be stopping people for broken traffic lights, or for littering, or for evading fares. Because then everybody becomes guarded in their interactions with police. You'll always worry that a stop is about something more. It's unhealthy to have a populace that is constantly worried when police are around, especially if crime is high and you want police around more.
Why is this bad? Removing the dumbest and most impulsive criminals from society as fast as possible seems like a net boon. Letting them run around doing dumb, malicious things when they're readily observed being dumb and malicious just seems like a terrible plan.
Doesn't this contradict the first point? If you're going to need to arrest these imbeciles at some point, you might as well get it over with.
Wait, I thought you were just saying that arresting the low-level criminals was a problem because it's not politically tenable...
Well, not everybody. Pretty much all decent people just don't litter or jump turnstiles.
Before COVID, the NYC MTA transit police had a little scheme. They ignore scruffy fare-jumpers during rush hour; those people are going to be a pain and not pay fines anyway. But late at night, people with unlimited metrocards would come and the turnstiles wouldn't accept their card (because MTA maintenance ain't the best). The stations are unstaffed so there would be nobody to help. So sometimes they'd then just jump the broken turnstile. BAM! Out of a hidden room, two cops would appear to fine them and throw them out. Of course the cops knew the score; they'd been watching the whole thing on camera. But it's an easy ticket. The proposal here just formalizes that system -- harsh control for the decent people, freedom for scum.
I am going to have to ask for actual evidence for this. First of all, I have been in plenty of NYC subway stations, and while there are some with doors and rooms off the platforms, there is generally no room for such things in the area in view of the turnstiles. Second, there is no such thing as an unstaffed subway station in NY; although not every entrance is staffed, every station has at least one manned booth. In addition, data on fare evasion tickets is available here. The spreadsheets list tickets by station, and note that, eg, in the 4th Quarter of 2019, there were very few tickets issued at individual stations other than major ones such as 14th St or Times Sq, which are very much manned 24 hrs.
Third, each station has several turnstiles; if one has a glitch, the one next to it won't.
Also, since it is ** fare evasion** , not turnstile jumping, which is illegal, I rather doubt that I have committed a crime if I jump the turnstile while in possession of an unlimited metrocard.
Finally, the station with the highest number of tickets in 4Q 2019 was Times Sq, with 517. That is fewer than 6 per day. There are only three stations with more that 360 tickets (i.e., 4 per day). There is no way that the MTA was spending time running the operation you describe, given the paltry returns.
"A person who shall be upon a rail transit vehicle and who shall lack proof of payment of the required fare shall be presumed to be in violation of this section."
How are you going to have proof of payment if you jump the turnstile?
(Presumably if you use the card, the proof of payment is recorded in the system.)
The claim was specifically re an unlimited metrocard, eg a monthly or weekly pass. That is per se proof of payment.
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