Imagine sitting on the subway in the middle of the afternoon, going about your day, when armed officers abruptly board the train, apparently in pursuit of someone. Within minutes, the officers deploy tasers and suddenly the sound of guns firing deafens you. People are terrified, screaming and bleeding. And all this chaos began over a skipped subway fare.
That was the scenario one evening in mid-September, when what began as an effort by the New York city police to enforce a $2.90 subway fare ended with officers shooting four people, including a fellow officer. The officers’ use of lethal force injured two riders completely uninvolved in the incident, one of whom suffered a grave head wound.
Across the country, the presence of police can turn the act of simply jumping a turnstile or failing to swipe a transit card into an escalated encounter ending in injury, deportation, and even death.
Aside from these substantial dangers, the use of police to enforce fare evasion is not an effective strategy. This approach doubles down on the erroneous logic of broken windows policing and its progeny, stop-and-frisk policing, which argue that cracking down on disorder and minor offenses will prevent future more serious crimes. History has shown this approach did not significantly affect rates of crime and resulted in reverberating trauma for many communities of color.
Further, the cost of penalizing transit users can exceed the amount of money collected from fining them. According to the American Public Transportation Association, fares made up, on average, only 12.5 percent of transit agencies’ operating expenses in 2021. Costs associated with hiring transit officers, paying overtime, and pursuing citations may outweigh any additional revenue stemming from fare enforcement. Indeed, fare evasion rates in general are hard to measure and may cover a variety of scenarios, including broken fare boxes or malfunctioning equipment.
Even enforcement mechanisms that don’t involve the police, like fare gates, can be costly and ineffective. New York City recently piloted new fare gates at stations across the city, yet observers noted glitches like badly placed motion sensors that made it possible to open gates with merely the swipe of a hand. The city of Oakland allocated $90 million to install new fare gates meant to “harden” their stations; however, bystanders reported seeing people easily wedge in after paying customers.
In addition to being ineffective, fare enforcement also disproportionately impacts communities of color and low-income individuals. Studies in Washington D.C., New York City, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Cleveland indicate that fare enforcement efforts disproportionately affect communities of color and that these groups tend to face harsher penalties when stopped by police.
Between July 2018 and June 2019, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) authorities reportedly issued 46 percent of citations to Black riders, even though only 12 percent of total riders are Black. From January 2016 to February 2018, Washington, DC, police issued a staggering 91 percent of all citations or summons for fare evasion to Black riders, nearly half of these to Black youth under age 25. And in 2022, Black and Latinx New Yorkers reportedly accounted for 73 percent of people arrested and given summons for fare evasion.
The authorities also disproportionately carry out fare enforcement in low-income neighborhoods. A study looking at data from 2017 and 2018 in New York City, found that police fare enforcement actions are more than twice as common in neighborhoods where more than 25 percent of residents earn less than the federal poverty guidelines.
Everyone should be able to access public transportation without fear of discrimination or excessive use of force by police. For many, access to public transportation is necessary for the realization of their human rights — to health, education, freedom of movement, and work. Those who rely on public transportation most heavily may be those who are unable to afford a car or whose disability, immigration, and housing status prevent them from obtaining a license.
Many jurisdictions are grappling with the failures of punitive approaches to fare enforcement and are instead turning to policies of decriminalization and commitments to free and reduced fares. Among them, are Luxembourg, which became the first nation to offer free transit in 2020, as well as at least 35 US agencies, according to the American Public Transit Association.
The policing and punishment of fare evasion is not an effective strategy. These tactics entrench racial disparities and do not generate more resources to keep the trains and buses running. Instead of prioritizing punishment, cities across the country should provide free public transportation and ensure people can navigate their communities safely, easily, and freely.
Olivia Ensign is a senior advocate and researcher at Human Rights Watch.
James Burch is deputy director at the Anti Police-Terror Project.
