Check Out the Number of Fare Evasion Tickets Issued by the NYPD at Your Stop Last Year – Over 100K Issued Overall

Police at Livonia Avenue L train station in Brooklyn issued six times more fare evasion summonses than average last year according to a data analysis by Gothamist. Despite only making up a quarter of New York City’s subway stations, they accounted for almost 70% of fare evasion tickets. Uniformed and plainclothes officers were stopping, ticketing, or arresting people on fare evasion charges almost daily, often dressed as MTA employees. Fare jumping arrests and tickets have more than doubled since Mayor Eric Adams took office, and a plan to flood the city’s subway system with more police has cost the city and state an additional $151 million in overtime. The Gothamist analysis found a huge disparity in the number of tickets and arrests at different stations, with the majority of fare evasion tickets being issued at just a quarter of the city’s stations, while zero fare evasion summonses were issued for 26 stations. Police say fare evasion enforcement is necessary because most people who commit felonies in the transit system don’t pay their fare. They stress that fare evasion is about rule-breaking behavior rather than unaffordability and converting the arrests into free Metrocards would be cheaper. fare evasion arrests were also higher at stops at the end of subway lines, as more officers are assigned to patrol those stations. A blue ribbon panel was launched in 2022 to reduce fare and toll evasion, and fare evasion-proof gates have been installed in Queens. Jacqueline Gosdigian, senior policy counsel with Brooklyn Defender Services, said that paying officers overtime rates to enforce fare evasion and then prosecuting cases in the court system is a waste of the city’s time and money. MTA Chair Janno Lieber has maintained that fare evasion comes from rule-breaking behavior rather than unaffordability, stressing that 26% of his agency’s $19.3 billion operating budget comes from fares. There are also concerns raised about the disproportionate impact of fare evasion enforcement in high-poverty neighborhoods and the racial disparities in fare jumping arrests.

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Photo credit gothamist.com