A Breakdown of How and Why Farebeating Is So Prevalent

[bobtehpanda]

9 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

I agree... Lot of these police officers nowadays don't do shit anyway.

JUST had a conversation with both my siblings last night about this very thing.... Standing around conversing amongst themselves, or trying to holla at women (funny how there's no outcries of street harrassment when it's a cop, but that's another topic), or more preoccupied on their cell phones... IDK how many times this past calendar year alone I've seen farebeaters walk right through the gates w/ a damn cop{s} standing right there....

I'm not going to lie to you.... There's times when I feel like a f***ing sucker paying the fare with as much farebeating that's going on.... It's ridiculous.

 

 

The Guiliani merger of Transit police in hindsight seems like a mistake. Uniformed NYPD feel like they're too good to do that kind of work and they like having the power to let their friends and family slide. It's not just the farebeaters, it's the people parking all over the sidewalks and crosswalks, with their obviously fake placards and whatnot, it's the general lack of caring about minor crimes impacting quality of life. They don't care, and flash one of those PBA cards and they really don't care.

NYPD has become a quota-obsessed monolith that doesn't care about doing the gritty day-to-day, despite the fact that we are out of the crime-infested '80s. It's ridiculous.

[Deucey]

On 12/31/2018 at 3:28 PM, RailRunRob said:

Correct not within the City Proper which is fairly small. But your seeing a lot of spillover in the East Bay  Oakland, Ashby Berkeley, and even Richmond  I lived in the Eastbay for 3 years and SF for 2 you can hardly recognize it nowadays. 

They're ruining Oakland, and there's too many NIMBYs in all the planned cities along 580.

But this is the new flavor. You might've missed it when they bought up Stockton above March Ln and changed their minds about the $5 tolls across the San Mateo Bridge to get to all the West Bay tech companies.

That ruined Stockton so bad that it and SJ County were the murder capital and foreclosure king of California for years.

And now they ruined El Camino Real. At least Pacifica is largely safe.

[Deucey]

On 1/6/2019 at 11:52 AM, RailRunRob said:

Right your 100% correct.  It was mentioned a few times the cure is more costly than the ailment. 

Meh. 

I'll give a cognate: highway patrol/state police.

Largely they're a government security force, but their main role - believe it or not, is revenue generation. Speeding tickets, fix-it tickets, etc. The most "anal" break even.

But there's the symbolism - drive down the interstate at 80 in a 65, and you might get away more often than getting caught. But get caught one time (and I'm using the California model here because that's what I know from those times): $10 for every mile over the limit; $300 for traffic school to get the point off my record, and $20 extra per month on auto insurance for 12-24 months.

So what do people do? Either get better at not getting caught, or comply and avoid interactions.

======

I use that to point out that dedicated forces can enforce "better" behavior. Undoubtedly, a reconstituted NYCTA police isn't going to generate enough economic revenue to be revenue-neutral, but if they could get that $215 million figure down by half, that does fix a bit of the financial hole. 

And, it does upgrade the quality of experience on transit, since maybe the hobos pee less on staircases or sleep less often on benches and subway seats, or maybe they get into recovery programs and turn their lives in a different direction. (I had an uncle here that was homeless and schizo in the 80s and 90s. Before Giuliani merged NYPD and TP, one of the TP and Homeless cop teams got through to him, he got his rehab and was not only back to work, he bought or rented - I dunno - one of those apartments in the high-rise at 135/B-way.)

I don't think this can be looked at solely on budget outlays.