ROBS SOAR IN SuBWAY
Spike 17% as fare-beat busts plunge
SUBWAY robberies have spiked at a time when less enforcement action is being taken by police against fare evaders — but no one can agree if fewer arrests and summonses are the reason for the increase in felonies.
The numbers are the most stark in Manhattan, where District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. announced in February his office would stop prosecuting most fare evasion cases.
Instead, the accused get the chance to avoid a conviction either by completing a rehabilitation program, or by getting an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal if they are not arrested within six months.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill at the time called Vance out, noting two busts days earlier of accused fare evaders who weren’t prosecuted despite having arrest histories that would typically preclude such treatment.
Through Sunday, meanwhile, there have been 54 subway system robberies in Manhattan, a 54% increase compared with 35 in the same time frame last year.
At the same time, arrests for theft of service — the legal term for fare evasion — in Manhattan are down 62%, to 1,193 from 3,168.
And summonses that get adjudicated at an NYC Transit hearing have dropped 32%, to 6,883 from 10,058. Statistics for Criminal Court summonses, which constitute a far lower percentage of overall summonses, are being tabulated by the NYPD and were not available.
But Danny Frost, a Vance spokesman, pointed out that January robbery statistics predate the DA’s announcement, adding that robberies were, in fact, down in April.
He also said that with grand larcenies down 5% citing the rise in robberies is “cherry-picking.”
“I don’t see how one could attribute an uptick in robberies — but not declines in other crimes — to our fare evasion policy,” Frost said.
The subway crime numbers in Manhattan reflect a citywide pattern — 17% more robberies and a drop in enforcement for fare evasion, with 60% fewer arrests and 36% fewer summonses.
Overall, crime in the subway system is down 8%, with no murders, rapes or shootings.
After Manhattan, Queens had the second biggest jump in subway robberies — 26 this year compared with 17 last year, a 53% hike.
Arrests for fare evasion in the borough were down 53% and summonses were down 10%. A spokeswoman for Queens DA Richard Brown said almost 75% of those stopped for not paying were their fares given civil summonses, meaning they were either first- or secondtime offenders.
Ed Mullins, head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said cops feel there’s little reward and great risk to making an arrest or issuing a summons for such a minor infraction.
“There’s definitely the belief: We’re not prosecuting them so why lock them up?” Mullins said. “Why am I putting myself in a situation where if things go bad I’m struggling with a guy or I’m fighting with a guy and the guy falls on the tracks and gets hit by a train? “Over a fare beat?” Chief of Transit Edward Delatorre said officers in his command are regularly told that fare evaders can be arrested and prosecuted, particularly if they are repeat offenders or pose a safety risk — and that doing so often prevents more serious crimes, either because the offender is wanted for another crime or is carrying a weapon.
Delatorre also said it is far too early to say what link, if any, exists between not prosecuting fare evaders and an increase in robberies.
He noted that in Manhattan subway robberies have slowed in the past month — thanks in part to overnight counterterror patrols riding the subway — and that the drop in enforcement can be linked to a shift in personnel.
“We’ve deployed more resources to on-train, off-platform away from the turnstiles,” Delatorre said.
“As we saw more crime on the (trains) we determined it was better to put more cops on the trains themselves.
“So that’s going to impact the enforcement numbers.”
Prosecutors in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx have in recent months emphasized diversion programs.
City Councilman Donovan Richards (D-Queens), chairman of the Public Safety Committee, noting that Bronx subway robberies are down 18% even as fare evasion enforcement has dipped at a greater pace than in Manhattan, said it’s too soon to draw any conclusions.
He seemed fairly certain, however, that hardened criminals don’t pay much attention to policy shifts by prosecutors.
“If you’re going to commit a crime,” Richards said, “you’re going to do it.”
But to Tina Luongo, who heads the Legal Aid Society’s criminal defense practice, the varying numbers prove “fare evasion policing is not a crimefighting technique, nor was it ever.”
“Fare beat enforcement is a cheap tactic that misallocates NYPD resources, criminalizes the poor, and ensnares individuals from communities of color in the criminal (justice) system,” Luongo said.