Fare-beating is a crime

Stop! Yes you, Mr. District Attorney. In plain sight, Manhattan DA Cy Vance is absconding with years of lessons painfully learned about how to keep New York City’s subways safe, by flat-out refusing to prosecute any and all turnstile jumpers arrested by the police.

As it stands, even though “theft of services” is on the books as a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail, the vast majority of fare-beaters get off with a civil summons — in other words, a $100 ticket.

Vance, acting alone among the city’s five DAs, fancies extending the courtesy to all but the narrow band of violent ex-cons he defines as worthy of prosecution. Which is to say, they have to have a violent felony or sex crime conviction on their recent record, an open warrant or be urgently wanted.

We sympathize with the goal: to lift the heavy boot of the criminal justice system off those committing petty infractions, not least because those arrested are disproportionately black or Latino, and in the process to send fewer to that not-verynice place known as Rikers Island.

But preemptively announcing that no one save that small, DA-defined subset will ever be prosecuted — flagrant repeat fare-beaters and likely underground menaces among the preemptively forgiven — is to discourage police enforcement, and encourage widespread turnstile-jumping.

Imagine setting the same blanket rule for, say, theft of a candy bar.

NYPD Commissioner Jimmy O’Neill is right to worry that his officers could easily lose control of the rails — and points, as we must, to a fare-beater with an epic arrest record, including robbery and grand larceny charges, whom the DA let go just this weekend.

The right way forward is not to traffic in absolutes as Vance does, but to work with police to reduce arrests and prosecutions for stealing a measly $2.75 while pursuing alternatives to shoveling jumpers into criminal arraignments.

In a Manhattan test run last summer, cops arrested hundreds fewer than previously. Once charged, defendants could have their cases dismissed if they took a class and stayed out of trouble.

That should have been a head start toward further reductions in collars, toward fewer rotations of the turnstile sending too many fare evaders between the subway and city jails and back.

It’s not too late for Vance to turn back. Lucky for him, exiting is free.