In 1993, cops caught 1,232 people on the subways with illegal guns. Last year, they nabbed just 33. This dramatic reduction shows how good policing works — and is part of a cautionary tale for City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
Mark-Viverito wants Mayor Bill de Blasio to add 1,000 more cops — but also wants to make it harder for all cops to do their jobs, by making it not a crime to skip out on your subway fare. This well-intentioned effort to help black and Hispanic New Yorkers avoid the criminal justice system would probably mean more crimes — and more serious crimes.
Mark-Viverito is writing up a bill to decriminalize common “nuisance” offenses.
Right now, jumping a subway turnstile or walking through an open gate is a misdemeanor — with a penalty of up to a year in jail. Public drinking and public urination are also misdemeanors.
The council speaker wants to make this offense civil, not criminal — meaning it would be more like getting, say, a ticket for jaywalking. She’d do the same with six other offenses, including public drinking, public urination, being in a park after it’s closed and riding a bike on a sidewalk.
It’s fair to debate a couple of these. After all, it’s hard to see how being in the park in the middle of the night — without doing anything else bad — is a crime.
But farebeating is in a completely different category. It’s not a “nuisance” crime. It’s theft.
That’s what it’s called, in fact — “theft of services.”
And the victim is you. The MTA loses about $95 million a year to subway and bus farebeating. That’s almost all of this year’s fare hikes, which will raise $127.3 million for 2015. Or the MTA could use that stolen money to borrow $1.5 billion — enough for the next five years’ work on the Second Avenue subway.
Even if the MTA didn’t need the money, it’s not a good idea to decriminalize theft. If I can steal $2.75 from the MTA, why can’t I grab a candy bar from a street vendor?
By making simple theft seem casual, we’ll just encourage more of it — from everyone.
Of course, cops should use their discretion in making arrests. But they already do. Last year, cops made 29,433 “theft-of-services” arrests — the misdemeanor charge.
By contrast, they wrote 67,327 civil tickets — not a criminal charge — for the same offense. Jump the turnstile, and 70 percent of the time you’ll get a ticket, not a potential criminal record.
When do cops make arrests? When it’s an egregious violation — a multiple offender or someone who’s committing other crimes at the same time, too.
Last year, for example, cops arrested 1,912 people in the subway system for a particularly outrageous type of “theft of services” crime — selling MetroCard swipes.
Just one MetroCard swipe-seller can cost the MTA hundreds of dollars in revenue a day — and thousands more by jamming up machines. A person blocking a subway entrance and insisting you pay him for a swipe doesn’t exactly make for a pleasant experience.
Yes, virtually all of the people arrested for swipe-selling were men — 96 percent. And too many of them were black — 67 percent.
But this makeup isn’t police officers’ fault. It’s their job to create a safe environment for subway riders, not to fix the world’s decades-old social and cultural problems.
And one number here is good news: Despite spikes here and there, farebeating arrests are down since the city started cracking down on small crimes 20 years ago. In 1994, we had 41,402 such arrests. Yes, they fell to below 20,000 a decade ago — but today, with the MTA having taken away so many token-booth clerks, there’s more opportunity for such crimes. Even with these new opportunities, all farebeating today — caught and uncaught — is about one-fifth what it was two decades ago.
Another stat is even better news. Last year, cops caught 33 people in the transit system with illegal guns — many of them through a body search after farebeating. In 1993, the number was . . . 1,232.
Over the decades, most criminals have learned: Don’t beat the fare. And if you’re going to beat the fare, don’t carry an illegal gun when you do it.
By using the threat of a misdemeanor, then, we’ve saved thousands of people from felony convictions — not just a gun charge, but a potential murder charge, too, when they use that gun.
If we decriminalize farebeating, then, we may not help the people we’re trying to help.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.