It’s no surprise to me that fare evasion arrests are “among [the] city’s top offenses leading to jail.” Everyone always hears about how the NYPD arrests people for the most minor offenses and for not having their priorities on point in terms of the crimes to focus on. However, some of the stories that were mentioned in the New York Daily News‘ article made me really infuriated.

The NYPD’s justification for increasing their focus on fare evasion is that they’re keeping violent crime down, but as managing director at Bronx Defenders, Justine Olderman, said, there is nothing to show that fare evasion and violent crime even have a correlation. Sometimes, people might jump the turnstiles for the most minuscule reasons – their MetroCards might not be working, like in the case of Anthony Dailey, as mentioned in the article. There is no reason to believe that a majority of fare evasion situations occur for particularly bad reasons.

What’s even more infuriating is the treatment of some of the people who are arrested for fare evasion. Sure, these people are breaking the law and should be prosecuted for it, but it’s not a “violent” crime, and they shouldn’t be treated that badly. Pedro Estrella was arrested for being caught with two student MetroCards and not having ID on him, while he was on his way to prom. Estrella was left in the cell for four hours, and missed over an hour of his prom. It shouldn’t take this long to resolve the issue, and being arrested for this just for not having his ID on him is ridiculous.

This leads into how aggravating the reasons cops would arrest fare evaders instead of writing up a ticket.

Cops generally handcuff someone for fare-beating instead of writing up a ticket if the person has an open warrant or a criminal record, or doesn’t have ID on them, said NYPD an spokeswoman.

I can understand the first two reasons, but the third reason – for not having ID in your possession at the time, doesn’t really belong in the same category as the other two reasons. Sometimes, it could be an honest mistake as to why a person wouldn’t have ID on them at the time.

Lastly, it seems as though the NYPD is putting way too many resources into cracking down on fare evasion crimes. Maybe the actual violent crimes in the city – shootings, robberies, assaults, etc. can actually go down if the NYPD rethought their priorities.