Surveillance video, a $25 million claim and a Council caucus demand have forced the transit agency to ground its bus fare enforcers, reopening the argument over whether poor riders should be policed at all.
NEW YORK, New York (Mamdani Post) – The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has taken its bus fare enforcement agents off the street. After surveillance video of a Brooklyn school aide pinned against a bus shelter circulated, and a second recording surfaced, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber announced a stand-down of the so-called EAGLE Teams, and a bloc of City Council members now says the pause should be permanent. The episode exposes a larger question: why does the city fund the policing of a fare that half of bus riders are not paying?
What the videos show
The first incident took place around 6:45 on a weekday morning, when a Brooklyn school aide on his way to work was confronted over a transfer. As NY1’s report on the newly released video describes it, the inspectors asked the man for identification after he said he had already paid. The footage shows four inspectors holding him against a bus shelter before he falls to the ground. The NYPD took two harassment reports, one from the rider and one from an inspector, each alleging a push, and made no arrests. The rider has his arm in a sling, has missed work, and says he is now afraid to ride.
A second recording followed within days. NY1 reported that it shows a separate violent encounter between fare agents and a bus rider that happened several months earlier, which the MTA said it learned of only recently. The school aide has begun the first legal step toward a $25 million suit against the agency. An allegation in a claim is not a finding, and the MTA is entitled to have its side tested. But Lieber himself watched the first video and called parts of it concerning.
The stand-down and the investigation
On the Thursday after the second video, Lieber announced that the agency was pulling the teams from the bus network. Streetsblog’s coverage of the announcement reports that he said the teams failed to properly tell leadership about two incidents involving physical contact with riders, and that he called the move an “immediate safety stand down.” The agency’s chief of security, Michael Kemper, a former NYPD transit chief, will review the program. The teams will not return until Lieber is satisfied with their training and with the reporting and investigation protocols. No timeline has been given.
Some background matters here. EAGLE stands for Evasion and Graffiti Lawlessness Eradication, and the program dates to 2008, when Select Bus Service arrived. The MTA has about 350 unarmed agents who can issue summonses or ask riders to leave a bus. Streetsblog notes that officers have often halted buses to check every rider’s fare, and that a lag between OMNY taps and payment registration led to riders being falsely accused of skipping fares. In other words, some riders who paid were treated as people who did not.
The MTA’s case for enforcement
The agency has a position, and it should be stated fairly. Fare evasion on buses is roughly 50 percent, compared with about 10 percent on the subway, according to NY1. Lieber has called the teams an important part of the fight against evasion. At the board’s committee meetings, NYC Transit President Demetrius Crichlow said the pause is needed while the incidents are investigated and training is reviewed, and that he does not support eliminating fare enforcement. He pointed to a blue-ribbon panel report that recommended proof-of-payment on buses with unarmed enforcers, a model the EAGLE Teams were designated to test, amNewYork reported on the caucus response.
The Council’s progressives say it is not enough
The Council’s 23-member Progressive Caucus welcomed the suspension and said it falls short. In its statement it argued that “no one deserves to be tackled, beaten up, and dragged down the sidewalk,” and demanded that deployment end permanently, with the agents reassigned to roles that support riders instead of enforcing fares. It also objected to what it called a disproportionate deployment of the teams in low-income communities. The MTA declined to respond to that claim. The caucus is three members short of a majority of the 51-seat Council, which means the push will need allies.
The Mamdani administration welcomed the suspension. A City Hall spokesperson, Jeremy Edwards, said, “No New Yorker should fear for their safety because they cannot afford the fare.” The Riders Alliance, led by Danny Pearlstein, praised the decision and urged state and city leaders to negotiate a revenue package for fast, free and frequent bus service.
Policing the fare is a policy choice
The facts as reported point toward a conclusion that the transit establishment resists. If nearly half of bus rides go unpaid, the fare box is not working as a system, and no number of enforcers will make it work for a service that working people depend on every day. Streetsblog recorded that Lieber had repeatedly delayed a pilot for all-door boarding, which depends on proof-of-payment checks, and that the MTA has now moved toward approving it. That is a belated step toward a system that does not depend on stopping buses and checking every rider, and it arrived only after the confrontations that the agency now says concern it.
The rider who is stopped for a missing transfer is usually someone who already takes the slowest, least reliable service in the system, because it is what they can afford. Meeting that person with a team that can summon or remove them, and that in the recorded incidents appears to restrain them, is a perverse way to spend public money. We do not yet know what the EAGLE program costs, because the coverage reviewed here does not say, and the MTA should publish the figure. We also do not know whether the investigation will lead to retraining or to a permanent end. The public has a right to both answers.
What City Hall and Albany can do
The mayor does not run the MTA, and Gov. Kathy Hochul has just been reelected with Mamdani campaigning at her side. That political alignment is an opening. A revenue package that makes the bus faster and less dependent on fares would remove the justification for fare-enforcement squads altogether, and the Riders Alliance has already framed what such a package should do. Until it exists, the best interim step is simple: keep the teams grounded, release the video and the investigation findings, and expand all-door boarding so that paying the fare no longer means standing at the front of a line.
Readers who want a lighter look at the week in city politics can find it at Bohiney Magazine, though no one on that bus stop was laughing.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/