'No Evidence' Turnstile-Jumping A Crime Of Poverty: De Blasio

NEW YORK, NY — Turnstile jumpers trying to skip subway fares in poor Brooklyn neighborhoods are more likely to get arrested than those in other places, sending them on a costly trip through the criminal justice system, according to a study published in October.

The report was done by the Community Service Society — a nonprofit run by David R. Jones, one of Mayor Bill de Blasio's appointees to the MTA Board. But to the Democratic mayor, who wears the city's low crime rate on his sleeve, neither those findings nor any other figures constitute evidence that turnstile-jumping is a crime of poverty.

"There’s no evidence, to my mind," de Blasio told WNYC's Brian Lehrer on Friday. "We see — and it’s not perfect research, I think, from any point of view — but we see people who evade fares and have money, and we see people who evade fares and don’t have money."

The mayor on Friday doubled down on his opposition to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s decision not to prosecute most people arrested for jumping turnstiles starting Feb. 1, a move lauded by criminal-justice reformers who say penalties for fare evasion are too stiff for the crime.

Vance's office had previously run a pilot program in which fare-beating offenders were sent to court diversion programs or had their cases adjourned for likely future dismissal, Politico New York reported.

De Blasio argued the new policy gives a pass to "constant recidivists" or people who have committed other serious crimes. Even if some people skip fares out of desperation, that's no excuse for an "incoherent system" that implicitly encourages turnstile-jumping, he said.

"What I’m concerned about is if you’ve got people who are able to consistently evade fares with no meaningful sanction," de Blasio told Lehrer on his weekly "Ask the Mayor" segment. "If there is not arrest somewhere in the equation, if there’s consistent fare-beating, then we don’t have clear enough consequences and people will do it more and more. That’s not fair to everyone else in this city who pays their fare."

The NYPD in recent years has encouraged officers to give out summonses, or tickets, for turnstile-jumping rather than arrest offenders. That and other policies have helped cut 100,000 arrests from the city's books from 2013 through 2017, de Blasio said. He said he and NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill plan to meet with Vance about his policy.

While Vance hopes his policy will encourage police to arrest fewer turnstile-jumpers, the mayor's remarks belie the fact that it has no force over whether cops actually make those arrests. In a letter sent Monday to MTA Chairman Joe Lhota, the Democratic DA said cops can still "enforce the law exactly as they always have."

Prosecutors will still pursue charges against anyone caught with a weapon, drugs or other contraband, or who has an open arrest warrant for another crime, Vance wrote. Vance says he'll also keep prosecuting fare-evasion charges against people who have convictions for violent felonies or sex crimes, or who pose a public safety risk.

"Simply put, officers are encouraged to stop every farebeater they observe, to arrest those who endanger public safety, and to give criminal or civil summonses to those who don’t," Vance's letter said.

The debate over how aggressively to go after turnstile-jumpers as criminals has divided de Blasio from reformers and his progressive colleagues in city government, including Vance and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson.

It's also given the mayor a strange bedfellow in Lhota, a former Republican who was de Blasio's mayoral opponent in 2013. As Gov. Andrew Cuomo's pick to lead the MTA, Lhota has often criticized de Blasio for not doing enough to help the subway system get back on track.

Lhota sent a letter to Vance Monday objecting to his policy shift. It raised concerns about allowing turnstile-jumping to spread unabated and giving dangerous criminals a free pass to the subways, talking points de Blasio echoed Friday. Lhota also worries about possible revenue losses to a cash-strapped system from increased fare-beating.

The issue has led Lhota to consider reactivating the screeching emergency alarms on exit doors next to subway turnstiles that riders sometimes sneak through without paying, The New York Times reported. "Those doors should only be used for emergencies," Lhota told the paper.

Cuomo weighed in with a noncommital statement Wednesday, urging city officials to "strike a balance" between enforcing laws, keeping the subways safe and preventing unnecessary criminal prosectutions.

De Blasio said he's working to reduce poverty through his affordable housing program, the city's paid sick leave policy and other programs. He also called for half-price MetroCards for poor New Yorkers, funded by his proposed "millionaire's tax" on the city's wealthiest residents.

Jones, the head of the Community Service Society, agrees that fare discounts are part of the solution. But only prosecutorial decisions like Vance's can abate the harm that a fare evasion arrest can have on a person's life, he wrote in a letter to Lhota this week. People of color, who accounted for 89 percent of fare evasion arrests in 2016, are most at risk of those effects, which range from job loss to problems with housing, Jones wrote.

"When these effects are borne so disproportionately by people of color, justice demands a remedy," he wrote. "DA Vance's policy is a step in the right direction for this City, and one that other District Attorneys should emulate."

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify the nature of District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s pilot program for the handling of fare evasion arrests.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio rides a subway train in 2014. Photo by Rob Bennett/Office of Mayor of New York/Getty Images)