OPINION: NYPD in the MTA
Words and Photo by Jaquelin Bautista
The following article was featured in the December 2019 edition of The Campus.
“NoNYPD in the MTA!” shouted the crowds that flooded the subways and streets ofdowntown Brooklyn. The riots were likely incited by a now viral video of NewYork City police officers pointing their guns at a full subway cart to detain ateenager that had jumped the turnstile. In an effort to crackdown on fareevasion, police have begun to take action. However, these practices ignore whatis at the crux of the issue: not everyone has the $2.75, daily, for bothdirections, to pay the current MTA fare.
Presently,one in five New Yorkers are living below the poverty line, and the populationof the working poor continues to rise. The protest in Brooklyn illuminated andcondemned the racist patterns of arrests, with one of the chants being, “How doyou spell racist? N-Y-P-D!”
BetweenApril and June of this year, there has been a total of 15,820 summons and 682arrests for fare evasion. Despite an overall decline in arrests when comparedto last year’s records, it is evident that the Black and Latinx communities aremost vulnerable to persecution. Out of the total number of people receiving asummons, 6,110 were Black and 5,154 were Latinx, compared to only 2,846 oftheir white counterparts. Further, of the total arrests, a disproportionate 414detainees were Black, 175 were Latinx, and 76 were white.
Ofthose persecuted, 40.4% were 18-24 years of age, those aged 25-40 made up 37%,and another 15% were between the ages of 41-59. Many of these cases are ofstudents, young adults, mothers, and fathers living paycheck to paycheck –forced to pick and choose where to allocate every last hard-earned dollar.
Atthe 125th station in Harlem, a mother and her two daughters must wait, hopingto be swiped forward (the term given to earn a ‘swipe’ through the turnstile bya generous subway-goer with an unlimited metro-card).
Atthe same station, a student looks out for police before jumping the turnstile,the $2.75 fare lying in between him and the train that he takes to get to work.
Anotherstudent frustratedly, but honestly, shared with me, “I’m a full-time student, Isupport myself, and prefer not to have to choose between a $2.75 fare orbreakfast”.
“Trustme, I wouldn’t be jumping the metro if I didn’t need to,” stated anotherstudent.
Throughsocial media, the city’s youth have adopted practices to protect one anotherfrom prosecution. Students’ social media stories warn, “Police at 145,” and“Careful everyone, police at 116th.” People tweet to inform about the legalityof such practices as “swiping it forward,” as the phenomenon has been coined.It is through these media platforms that people can express their concernsabout recent actions taken to combat fare-evasion and take issue with theresources that have been allocated by the NYPD and MTA.
Forexample, the MTA hired 500 additional transit police officers, for whomsalaries start at $42,000, with the potential to rise as high as $100,368.Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. is funding these officers for thefirst four years, pooling from a $40 million allocation that has been made.While resources allow police officers to profit off the crisis and, byextension, the plight of New York City’s poorest minorities, fare hikes of 4%between 2021 and 2023 can be expected.
IncreasingNYPD’s presence in the subways is an insubstantial and ineffective solutionthat fails to address the deep-rooted issue looming: poverty. Theseprosecutions will only exacerbate the problem, leaving the most vulnerablecommunities of New York City, many of them over-populated with poor-workingclass minorities, to face the brunt of ‘transportation injustice’ exacted by anMTA that is failing us.
