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Dear Friends,
We thought that you'd be interested in seeing the PROP statement that we released yesterday regarding the disturbing incident last Sunday where NYPD cops chasing an alleged fare evader shot up a crowded subway station in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
NYPD SUBWAY CRACKDOWN: WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
"Our City’s pols & pundits have been paying lots of attention to the fare evasion issue lately, mostly calling for more punitive measures as an effective response. Our mayor Eric Adams has added more police to our subways & directed officers to crackdown on perpetrators—all the additional cops have been assigned to stations serving communities where low income NYers of color live.
Pamela Paul, opinion columnist for The NY Times, confidently wrote: “The truth is passengers don't pay because they can get away with it. The harder truth is that the city lets them. And the hardest truth is that the solution is more policing". Easy peasy, right? What could possibly go wrong?
This past Sunday, we found out. On a crowded subway station in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, a mainly Black & Latino neighborhood, NYPD officers, in pursuit of an alleged turnstile jumper with a knife, shot their guns hitting an officer & a bystander & critically injuring another bystander & the suspect.
Relevant to the question whether the police actions were justified, whether their gunfire in these circumstances made sense are:
** Over 93% of NYPD fare evasion arrests this year have involved NYers of color.
** The poverty rate is 39% for Brownsville where riders last year were 40 times more likely to receive a summons for fare evasion than the city-wide average.
** Overall, more than 1.5 million adult NYers (23%) & nearly 420,000 children (25%) live in poverty.
The hard reality illuminated by these statistics is that police tactics aiming to counter this problem are marked by a stark racial bias that targets poor communities of color & that compromises the lives & well-being, if not their actual personal safety, of the people living there. As David Jones, president of the Community Service Society, wrote in a November 27, 2019 column in The Amsterdam News: "Fare evasion is often about income inequity, not lawlessness. Truth (that word again) is many of our fellow NYers simply cannot afford MetroCard's $2.75 per-swipe along with other essentials such as paying rent or buying food".
The question that Eric Adams, Pamela Paul & other like-minded, misguided people sought to address is critical for our city and does not lend itself to easy answers. PROP's view is that a smarter, more benign response would not involve arresting and punishing more New Yorkers, but providing instead expanded economic & social supports for the many marginalized citizens who live among us."
Please feel free to be in touch with your questions &/or comments regarding our statement about this specific incident or the fare evasion issue generally.
As always, many thanks for your interest & support.
Onward,
Bob & Michaela
Bob Gangi,
PROP Director
917-327-7648
rpagangi@gmail.com
Michaela Bapis,
PROP Project Coordinator
michaelabapis@gmail.com
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