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New York City plans to intensify a crackdown on subway fare-beating by sending at least 800 police officers specifically to keep watch on turnstiles.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is implementing a fresh initiative this week, deploying additional officers into the city’s subway system to tackle fare evasions, the New York Post reported.
New York City plans to intensify a crackdown on subway fare-beating by sending at least 800 police officers specifically to keep watch on turnstiles, officials announced Monday.
It’s the latest in a string of recent moves to address concerns about safety and unruliness in the nation’s busiest subway system. Hours after the announcement, a person was shoved onto the tracks in East Harlem as a train was approaching the station. The train could not stop and the person was struck and was pronounced dead at the scene, the New York Police Department said.
Dubbed “Operation Fare Play,” the initiative sees hundreds of officers being dispatched underground to various stations across the city. The major concern of personnel on this shift will be checking turnstiles’ operation to ensure paid fares.
From Monday and onwards, members of public can anticipate the increased presence of police which should last the entire week at the very least.
This method of governance recapitulates a spate of recent high-profile incidents within the transit system, where the NYPD leaders have pointed out a rise in related crimes as the main reason.
The idea to boost subway security rises as a direct reaction to various incidents, of which A train in Brooklyn is a good example, where shots were fired during a dispute close to the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station.
Despite the accidents still being rare, we must take a closer look at the safety options. Though the general reduction in the number of major crimes and murders exhibits only a slight decline compared with the previous year, the occurrence of severe cases highlights the need for active and effective policing.
According to the NYPD, subway crime dropped 15.5% compared to the prior 12 months, partly because of the fact that transit cops started performing baggage search last month.
A 45-year-old man was taken into custody. NYPD said the incident was unprovoked.
The NYPD said earlier Monday it plans to deploy hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes officers this week to deter fare evasion.
“The tone of law and order starts at the turnstiles,” department Transit Chief Michael Kemper said at a news conference. Chief of Patrol John Chell said the additional officers would fan out to various stations, based on crime, ridership statistics and community complaints.
Data shows the crackdown on fare-skippers is already under way. Over 1,700 people have been arrested on a charge of turnstile-jumping so far this year, compared to 965 at this time in 2023. Police have issued fare evasion tickets to over 28,000 people so far this year.
A single subway ride is $2.90, though multiple-ride and monthly passes can cut the cost. Officials have complained for years that fare evasion costs the city’s transit system hundreds of millions of dollars a year. However, the policing of turnstile-jumpers has drawn scrutiny of tickets and arrests that disproportionately affected Black and Hispanic people, at least in some past years.
Police and Mayor Eric Adams, a former transit officer himself, in recent weeks have suggested some links between fare-skipping and violence on the trains.
Subway safety fears have proven difficult to put to rest since people in New York and other cities emerged from COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns to a 2021 spurt in crime.
After taking office in 2022, Adams rolled out a plan to send more police, mental health clinicians and social service outreach workers into the subways.
Police reports of major crimes in the transit system dropped nearly 3% from 2022 to 2023, and officials said Monday that overall crime so far this month is down 15% compared to last year.
But worries ratcheted up after some shootings and slashings in the last few months, prompting the NYPD to say in February that it was boosting underground patrols. Earlier this month, Gov. Kathy Hochul — like Adams, a Democrat — announced she was sending National Guard troops to help conduct random bag checks in the underground system.