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, the Associated Press reports. 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. 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 due to tickets and arrests that disproportionately affected Black and Hispanic people, at least in some past years.
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