24 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2022
    1. Earlier this year, Police Commissioner James O'Neill admitted that a "theft of services" arrest (the legal code name for turnstile jumping) could in fact lead to an immigrant getting deported. And earlier this month, a series of bills the City Council passed last year encouraging the use of civil summonses instead of arrests for quality of life crimes like public drinking, public urination and littering went into effect.

      Excusing criminality in a matter of deference to foreign nationals who are unlawfully present in the United States is perverse. The immigration laws have many provisions by design to ensure that foreign nationals who violate the laws of the United States in certain ways are not allowed to remain and harm the safety of Americans.

    2. The change in how turnstile jumping will be prosecuted comes at a time when the city's reliance on Broken Windows policing is under fire because of its impact on New York's low-income non-white community

      Crime has a significant effect on the entire New York City community, but especially on the low income community. Many NYC officials prioritize minimizing the effect of the law on criminals over minimizing the effect of criminals on law-abiding citizens.

    3. Vance announced in a press release this morning that his office "will no longer prosecute the overwhelming majority of individuals charged with Theft of Services for subway-related offenses, unless there is a demonstrated public safety reason to do so," starting in September of this year.

      DA Vance ignoring the possibility that people who engage in theft of public services are more likely to present a risk to public safety than those who do not.

    1. Currently, most theft-of-service cases are handled with summonses and rarely reach prosecution, according to a spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg does not prosecute fare beaters, according to a spokesman for his office.

      DA Alvin Bragg continuing Cyrus Vance's policy of declining to enforce theft of public services law.

    2. “We have seen over a 55% increase of assaults on officers this year,” NYPD Transit Chief Jason Wilcox said. “The majority of these assaults began as they were engaging persons who have committed fare evasion or other quality of life violations on the trains and stations.”

      Violent incidents wherein officers are attacked trying to issue summonses to criminals engaging in turnstile jumping.

    3. NYPD enforcement is also up. Police have issued 45, 667 summonses for fare beating this year, up from 36,669 in 2021, according to an NYPD spokesperson. Other transit crimes that have been a growing issue are grand larceny, robbery, and felony assault, according to Comp Stat figures.

      Increase in summonses for fare evasion in 2022 over 2021.

    1. Fortunately, there are other ways to protect the transit system’s revenue stream and promote orderly conduct without jeopardizing the personal liberty of riders. In Washington, D.C., the city council voted to decriminalize fare evasion, overriding the mayor’s veto.

      Unclear why Washington DC, which is one of the highest crime jurisdictions in the United States and has serious financial issues, is a model to follow.

    2. The crackdown should concern New Yorkers, because fare evasion enforcement is highly disproportionate. According to the most recent NYPD data, 92% of the 481 fare evasion arrests in the fourth quarter of 2019 were of non-white riders; 60% were black. Data like that led New York Attorney General Letitia James to announce a probe of racial disparities in fare evasion stops.

      There's an unexplained assumption that people NYC-wide crime statistics should mirror population statistics. This is not the case with many crimes where enforcement disparities would have no effect, homicides being one example.

    1. By the end of the day, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo weighed in with a statement urging “all parties” to find “balance” — but declining to take a side.

      Former Governor Cuomo, who went on to sign the bail reform law, refusing to support Mayor de Blasio on the importance of policing fare evasion in 2018.

    2. “The New York miracle, if you will, began with fare evasion — fare evasion enforcement on the subway 25 years ago,” Mr. Bratton said in February 2014, when he was newly appointed by Mr. de Blasio as commissioner. “We’re still at it.”

      Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton on the significance of policing fare evasion to New York City's revival in the 1990s.

    3. Mr. de Blasio, a champion of improving the lot of poor New Yorkers, has adamantly defended the police practice of using evasion of the $2.75 fare as a means for officers to check the names and warrants of those they stop, most of whom are black or Hispanic.He has been unpersuaded by critics on the left who believe the approach — pioneered in the 1990s by William J. Bratton, Mr. de Blasio’s first police commissioner — is a form of biased and overly aggressive policing akin to stop-and-frisk. And he does not think most are motivated by poverty.“A lot of people who commit fare evasion and the police encounter have a lot of money on them,” Mr. de Blasio said during a news conference at Police Headquarters on Tuesday. “I think I have a lot of validity on the question of income inequality and how we fight it, but you never heard me say, you know, open up the gates of the subway for free. That’s chaos.”

      Former Mayor de Blasio making a terrific point about the importance of policing fare evasion, an issue he understood despite not always acting in accordance with his correct statements.

    1. nd another population that both our mayor and governor have spoken passionately about protecting would stand to suffer greatly as a result of a new enforcement policy: immigrants. Immigrants who have even minor contact with the criminal justice system face far more drastic consequences. Under the Trump administration, an arrest for jumping a turnstile or even a criminal summons could result in deportation, family separation, and destroyed lives.

      If a foreign national who is in the United States without legal authorization does something stupid and is required to appear in Court as a result, he or she may be more likely to come to the attention of immigration authorities. As an initial matter, the solution is to not violate the immigration laws of the United States. However, if one chooses to violate the immigration laws, he or she ought to avoid doing things like jumping turnstyles. Many Americans likely avoid taking certain liberties that they do in the United States when they are traveling in foreign countries.

    2. Poor black and brown people should not take the fall for the sins of politicians who have allowed the MTA to become a laughing stock. Arrests won’t solve the MTA’s problems, but they could devastate New Yorkers.

      It is unclear to me how the MTA's own incompetence exonerates people from stealing public services. I am confident that fare beaters, black, brown, white, or anything else, are stealing public services because the MTA is a train-wreck. Both issues contribute to the current mess in the NYC Subway system, but they are not otherwise related.

    3. Years of grappling with the ripple effects of Broken Windows policing have shown us that arrests are not the way to deal with minor offenses, like riding your bike on the sidewalk, having an open container of alcohol, smoking marijuana, or jumping a turnstile. An uptick in enforcement would reverse the recent positive trend of fewer fare evasion arrests. Through October, police have made 5,236 arrests for fare evasion. That is still 5,236 arrests too many, but it represents a 66 percent drop compared to the same period last year.

      Not prosecuting crimes is a positive trend, apparently. This disregards how NYC transformed itself in the 90s and 00s under the leadership of Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg, and how that success was maintained at least when former Mayor de Blasio wisely chose William Bratton as NYPD Commissioner.

    4. An analysis of New York Division of Criminal Justice Services data from the last four years by the Marshall Project shows that nearly 90 percent of people arrested for turnstile jumping were black or Hispanic. Given the NYPD’s history of targeting people of color for arrests and summonses for low-level offenses, let’s call the new proposal to crack down on fare evasion what it is: a plan that would funnel thousands more black and brown New Yorkers into the criminal justice system, and to scapegoat people of color for the decades of underfunding and mismanagement that are responsible for the MTA’s current problems.

      This must be it. There are no alternative explanations such as the possibility that certain crimes may be disproportionately committed by people who share one characteristic and not another (see NYC homicide statistics). Moreover, it is unclear to me why the writer is lumping "black and Hispanic" people together since, if this is purely a race-based claim against the NYPD, there may be different statistics for these two very broad groups.

    5. Police resources must be spent on working with the community and identifying the types of behaviors that cause the most harm—not physically harmless fare evasion.

      This disregards the fact that there is a high correlation between "behaviors that cause the most harm" and "fare evasion," lest the author would suggest that of people who commit crimes on transit, a meaningful number of them pay the fare.

    6. The MTA and NYPD pledged last week to crack down on fare evaders. The MTA’s plan is to send agency executives and NYPD officers to subway stations and bus stops across the city. The executives will stand at subway turnstiles and on busses to create body blockades to bar anyone trying to get in without a Metrocard. More armed police officers at subway stations make an already harrowing commute for New Yorkers even more intolerable, and for many, will serve to add unnecessary fear into the way they start or end their day.

      I will venture that most New Yorkers are more concerned about lawless behavior on subways than by the presence of uniformed police.

    1. “If we start saying it’s alright for you to jump the turnstile, we are creating an environment where any and everything goes,” the mayor warned. “It’s a crime. Now, you could defer prosecution, you could people in programs, you could do all sorts of things, but let’s not ignore it, and that’s what’s happening to our subway system.”

      Mayor Adams was correct to the extent that he noted that turnstyle jumping is a crime and should not be permitted - however, he has not used all of tools at his disposal to police the Subways against the opposition of the District Attorneys.

    1. At least fifty-six New Yorkers have been pushed onto subway tracks over the past two years. Subway crimes have more than doubled, so far, this year, compared with the same time last year. According to MTA board member Andrew Albert, another major issue is turnstile jumping. 99.99% of people that are committing crimes in the subways did not pay their fare. If we can stop that at the turnstiles, we've not only helped the MTA bottom line, but we've stopped crime in its tracks.

      This is a very important point. Policing fare evasion is not only a financial issue or a fairness question, it is a matter of public safety. It is true that not every person who engages in theft of public services is violent, but as Andrew Albert notes, violent felons are overwhelmingly likely to not pay MTA fares.

    1. Now, though, Vance’s office is voicing its displeasure with the fact that the NYPD has continued to arrest turnstile-jumpers. But how can Vance deter people from farebeating through diversion or dropped charges, and see if this approach yields better results for everyone—particularly the public—if police never arrest fare evaders in the first place?

      This is a very interesting passage. It highlights that the NYPD is free to enforce the law and make arrests notwithstanding the efforts of District Attorneys to rewrite the law through the refusal to prosecute laws that they do not like. Former DA Vance's "displeasure" highlights that the NYPD and Mayor are not helpless - and that they can put pressure on lawless District Attorneys by continuing to enforce the law. The refusal of the Mayor and the NYPD leadership to use the tools in their toolbox has been a driving force in the increase in fare-beating.

    2. Deterring people from stealing from the MTA keeps mass transit safe and improves the lives of everyone who rides.

      Well said.

    3. The DA’s reasoning is that this misdemeanor charge—called theft of services for transit—can carry a punishment of up to a year in jail. The misdemeanor conviction, so the argument goes, victimizes otherwise law-abiding people too poor to afford the subway fare, burdening them with a criminal record as they seek employment or housing.

      Theft of public services, like other kinds of theft, does have the potential to "burden" offenders with a criminal record.

  2. Jul 2018
    1. It’s this combination, the fetish for strength and the idealization of racially coded innocence, that has historically led authoritarian movements to subvert the rule of law in the name of order.