How gibberish “tears the social fabric”

The head of the MTA, Janno Lieber, is absolutely right: the goodbye “rips the social fabric”, causing damage that goes far beyond a simple theft.

Not that the thefts don’t add up: The practice cost the cash-strapped MTA an estimated $500 million last year. But it’s a more insidious impact, which Lieber told the editorial board of The Post on Tuesday.

First, it makes breaking the law the first action these people take when entering the transit system, setting them up for action. more. This can go as far as terror and attacks on others, both fellow travelers and MTA employees.

Or, as Mayor Eric Adams put it, “If we start saying you can jump the turnstile, we’re creating an environment where anything and everything will go.”

Moreover, simply watching others get away with it tells everyone else that law and order does not count in the transit system. Worse, it encourages others to break the rules: why be a sucker?

This practice has skyrocketed during the pandemic and is still well above pre-2020 levels, but a key moment came in 2017 when then-Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance announced he would stop prosecuting the crime, a policy that was then copied by other district attorneys. and Vance’s successor Alvin Bragg continues. Vance argued that the $2.75 crime was not worth the resources of the prosecutor’s office, nonchalantly ignoring the far greater social cost of its tolerance.

In fact, he appeased the left, which pretended to be a “crime of poverty” as if fares were out of reach. (Bragg has even fewer excuses, as low-income New Yorkers are now eligible for half-price rides.)

And the knowledge that these cases will not be prosecuted deters police officers from enforcing the law at all. However, the arrest of these criminals often leads to the capture of serious criminals. Last October, for example, a repeat offender was caught at a toll stop linked to a cut on train 1 earlier in the month. As Lieber remarked at the time, “criminals are, in the vast majority of cases, pharmacists.”

Indeed, the police who stop the transporters regularly find them with illegal weapons.

In fact, a huge twist in the city of anti-crime began back in the 1990s when then-Transit Police Chief Bill Bratton launched a wide-ranging, systematic crackdown on tolling. New York could certainly use the same today.