Dumbo de Blasio Shocker: Decriminalizing NYC Bus Fare Skipping Leads To Fewer People Paying Fares

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://hotair.com/archives/2019/06/25/shocker-decriminalizing-nyc-bus-
fare-skipping-leads-fewer-people-paying-fares/

Prison reform (or justice reform) is a big ticket item for all of the 2020
Democratic presidential candidates, and that includes all manner of
decriminalization. POTUS candidate and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
is a big proponent of such things and the theory extends far beyond just
legalization of marijuana. In the Big Apple, Manhattan District Attorney
Cy Vance was urged last year to end criminal prosecutions for people who
board buses without paying the fares or jump the turnstiles in the subway.
This was supposed to end the “harassment” of poor people and end needless
court appearances for such low-level scofflaws who are frequently
economically disadvantaged people of color.

Sounds good, right? A nice little gift for those who are struggling. But
to the shock of absolutely nobody outside of the city government, no
sooner had they enacted the policy than many people just stopped paying
the fares entirely. And by “lots” I mean as many as 24% of bus riders.
Turnstile jumping is on the increase as well and it’s costing the transit
system millions. (NY Post)

More and more riders are boarding city buses without paying the fare,
according to new MTA data for the first quarter of 2019.

The cheapskates run most rampant on local bus routes, where one in every
four riders skirts the fare, representing a 35-percent spike from the same
time period in 2018.

Turnstile-jumping on the subways is also on the rise, though it remains
far less frequent at approximately 3.9 percent of riders, the data,
released ahead of the agency’s Monday board meeting, shows…

Fare-beating is a growing strain on the coffers of the $17 billion agency
— which hemorrhaged $240 million, or 1.5 percent of its annual budget,
over the 12 months ending in March.

The same people who thought this was a great idea (specifically Governor
Andrew Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio) are now struggling with how to fix the
system they just finished fixing. They just announced plans to reassign as
many as 500 NYPD officers to monitor bus and train routes “as a deterrent
to fare-beaters.”

Seriously? You’re going to pull 500 cops off of other duty to make sure
people are buying and using tokens for mass transit? You know, guys, we
actually already had a “deterrent to fare-beaters.”It was the knowledge
that if they were caught doing it they would be dragged into court and
have to pay a fine. If they did it too many times, they might wind up
cooling their heels in a jail cell for a little while. And it worked
fairly well.

What we’re seeing here is yet another example of the negative results
we’ve experienced since moving away from the previous “Broken Windows”
theory of law enforcement. By acting aggressively to prevent smaller
crimes, you create an environment where escalation to larger crimes is
less likely. But now, this compassionate approach seems to be relying on
the idea that if Big Brother is seen as more of a friendly fellow who
won’t punish you when you color outside the lines, everyone will just
behave well and march off into the rainbow-colored sunset.

So you decided to stop prosecuting fare-jumpers. And then people stopped
paying the fares. If only there had been some way to predict that this
would happen.



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Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
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Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for cleaning up the disaster
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The Obama-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)
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Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
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