Fare-beat goes on

Turnstile-jumper arrests soar 132%

It’s turnstile justice. Big Apple subway fareevasion arrests skyrocketed 132% in 2023, to 4,917 compared with 2,121 in 2022, reflecting the NYPD’s increased commitment to tackling turnstile jumpers and stopping the havoc they cause.

And as enforcement increased, so did the number of guns and criminals cops pulled out of the subways.

The NYPD recovered 45 firearms from the subway system in 2023, compared with 35 the year before, a 29% spike, police data requested by The Post revealed. Of the 45 guns recovered, 24 were seized during encounters with farebeaters. In 2022, 11 of the 35 firearms came from such incidents.

The figures also showed that 1,462 farebeaters arrested in 2023 had an active warrant, 88% more than the 777 the year before.

The NYPD did not provide a breakdown of the serious crimes alleged to have been committed by the farebeating fugitives.

“I applaud the crackdown on farebeaters,” community activist Karlin Chan, 69, who rides the N, Q and D trains, told The Post.

Chan heads the nonprofit Chinatown Mural Project, which helped raise thousands of dollars to assist an injured woman who was shoved onto subway tracks in August.

“New York City needs to enforce quality-of-life issues. Non-enforcement empowers thugs and emboldens them,” he said.

Much of the police progress in 2023 was built on the increase in cops on patrol on the subways rolled out by Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul in October 2022.

Underground blotter

Since last week, NYPD Transit derailed four suspected farebeaters who were packing heat or blades:

■ Cops recovered a loaded firearm from a man nabbed Jan. 3 for alleged farebeating in The Bronx, police said. Xavier Williams, 31, was arrested at the Brook Avenue station on the 6 subway line at East 138th Street in Mott Haven, after an eagle-eyed officer spotted him entering the station via an emergency gate, the NYPD said. After cops handcuffed Williams, they also found a loaded gun tucked in his waistband, officials said.

■ The following day, Jan. 4, at the Seventh Avenue/Ninth Street F subway station in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Jajuan Williams, 21, was caught trying to “manipulate” his way past a turnstile, refused to provide

ID, resisted arrest and injured a cop while being taken into custody, sources said. A search turned up a switchblade, cops said.

■ Hours later, at the Franklin Avenue A/C station in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, cops nabbed Brandon Cheek, 31, for suspected farebeating, police said, and recovered 38 decks of heroin and a loaded firearm from his waistband. The gun was reported stolen in Charleston, SC.

■ On Thursday, cops at the A/C Rockaway Avenue station in Brownsville, Brooklyn, arrested Jacquan Kennedy, 35, of Brooklyn, after he was spotted walking though an emergency gate to beat the $2.90 fare, authorities said. The arresting officer recovered a firearm, a magazine containing six bullets and crack cocaine, cops said.

“Theft of service isn’t the minor crime that some socialist City Council members want you to believe,” said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Turnstilejumpers who think that the cops are watching are less likely to carry a firearm or other weapon. Just look in the annals of NYC’s turnaround in the 1990s.”

In June 2023, Claude White, a homeless man accused of fatally stabbing subway passenger Tavon Silver on a 4 train, was charged with the slaying — days after he was caught trying to skip out on a subway fare in Harlem wearing blood-stained pants, cops said. White, who had been on parole and was wanted in connection with a June 6 bank robbery, faces murder and weapon charges.

“An integral part of the Transit Bureau’s overall safety strategy is curbing acts of lawlessness at our turnstiles, and that includes farebeating,” NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper told The Post.

Kemper said cops “are showing the same level of commitment and dedication to subway safety in 2024.”