Over the weekend, I wrote a not-so-sympathetic post on a woman who jumped the fare and bemoaned getting caught. I compared her actions to jumping the turnstile in the subway, and I don’t feel bad for her plight. This story, on the other hand, irks me.
To set the stage: Yvette Stokes uses her 30-day MetroCard to procure a Select Bus Service receipt at 106th St. and 2nd Ave. Upon boarding, enforcement agents ask her for her proof of payment, and she obliges. Then, 72 blocks and 15-20 minutes later, another group of officers board the bus and again ask riders to procure the POP receipts. Ms. Stokes rummages around in her bag and pulls out a two-day-old receipt instead. “The officer was very agitated with this and started shouting at me,” she told The Post. “The very next thing he said was that I couldn’t hold up the bus — and then he ordered me off the bus.”
After exiting the bus, Stokes shows the officer the proper receipt, but he writes her up a $100 ticket anyway, ignoring her proffered receipt. The summons has since been dismissed, and the MTA claims the officer did nothing wrong. Yet, this response is unnecessarily hostile. By checking POP receipts multiple times one one bus route, police are making normal bus riders seem like criminals, and the office in this instance showed an utter lack of common sense. If the point of SBS is to convince riders to take the bus over subway-like distances, Transit and its agents must toe the fine line between proper enforcement and overbearing ticketing.
17 comments
This is what happens when the NYPD burdens cops with ticket quotas. They’re doing it to try and generate revenue for the City. Cops hate it, but go with it because not meeting your quota gets you assigned to details and shifts that no one wants to perform. I am not an officer myself, but I’ve heard this from nearly every officer I know, which, off the top of my head, is over a dozen.
NYPD are not fare inspectors on SBS buses, MTA personnel are.
I don’t see a problem with asking for proof of payment multiple times during a ride. It’s the rider’s responsibility to have proper proof of payment at all times.
However, I do see two problems here. First, why can’t fare inspectors just swipe 30 day metrocard users to check if their card is valid.
Second, if you’re going to write someone a ticket for not having proof of payment, why should they have to get off the bus? Wouldn’t it make more sense to call it a “penalty fare” like the they do in the UK and allow the person to continue their ride?
Why can’t they swipe everybody.
Keep your ticket/receipt handy at all times! Sure it wasn’t handled the best in this case, but you avoid all these types of issues if you just follow the proper procedure. You shouldn’t have to “rummage” for your ticket/receipt; it should be accessible in a second, no matter how many times you’ve already had to show it.
But she was able to produce the receipt, though. She put it in her purse, an she mistakenly took out the wrong ticket.
In any case, I’m glad she had her case dismissed (even if it was on a technicality). She shouldn’t have to pay $100 for a simple mistake.
*Why* is there such a thing as a ticket quota? The whole concept baffles me since it seems to imply that the purpose of the police is not to reduce crime, but merely to punish it….
Actually, it implies that the purpose of the police is to raise revnue for the city.
One answer would be that it ensures the police are actually working and not just hanging out in donut shops all day. But the real answer is to ensure a certain level of ticket revenue for the city.
Which is completely obscene. The purpose of the police is to reduce crime, and a ticket quota is completely antithetical to that…
I completely dont understand why the metrocard itself isnt proof of payment. Rig up portable swipers for the cops to carry. This is how its done elsewhere… the receipts are utterly stupid. A transit system isnt Home Depot.
I lived, worked or went to school in SF for 6 years. Along train lines that were PoP systems. Never once was I stopped and asked for my receipt. (Except for Caltrain which is more like LIRR or Metro North.) I know NY loves it’s police and broken-windows-theory of policing, but seriously 2x on one bus? That seems out of control. The point of the system should be that it’s unpredictable and random that way the surprise of asked to show receipts is higher. (And cost of enforcement is lower.)
just part of the daily humiliation of being poor and being forced to ride the bus every day in NYC.
No one has ever answered the question why the officers have to hold the bus and can’t check fares while riding? The whole purpose of SBS is to save time. If the bus is stopped twice, five minutes each time. does that not cancel out most if not all of the time savings for the riders?
It seems that the object here is revenue, not the savings of time. The only justification for officers holding the bus, rather than riding with it, is that holding it results in more fines. Because if a check isn’t completed before the next stop, some who didn’t pay in advance may just get off instead.
Apparently, they stopped holding the bus – even in the South Bronx. Eventually, sanity prevailed.
Not in Manhattan last night. As we were pulling up to a stop heading downtown, the driver made an announcement telling everyone to have their receipts handy. Two agents got on and held the bus for at least five minutes while checking everyones slips.
Even my great home state of New Jersey has figured out that you have agents ride the transit vehicle rather than hold it at the stop.
Wow. Okay, so either they do it sometimes but not at other times, or my Bronx correspondent just happened to see a few inspections that were done right recently.