In yet another sign of the vibe shift, cops in Washington, D.C., have begun hauling riders off of city buses for skipping the fare.
Back in the Woke Era (2014 to 2024), fare evasion was nearly a cause celebre. The history of this period needs to be recalled regularly lest tomorrow’s liberals claim it never happened — pretending it’s some right-wing fever dream.
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Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, in early 2018, said he wouldn’t prosecute turnstile jumpers, and cops noted this included those with more than 50 offenses.
When subsequently some cops got into scuffles with unruly turnstile-hoppers, hundreds of New Yorkers protested the enforcement of subway fares by hopping the turnstiles en masse. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) praised the gate-hoppers as civil rights heroes.
“Arresting people who can’t afford a $2.75 fare makes no one safer and destabilizes our community,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “New Yorkers know that, they’re not having it, and they’re standing up for each other.”
Squadmate Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) promoted “decriminalizing fare evasion” nationwide as part of her “People’s Justice Guarantee.”
And in the nation’s capital, the Democratic city council in 2019 overrode the Democratic mayor’s veto to pass a bill that, in effect, made Metro fares optional. The American Civil Liberties Union praised the council: “With today’s vote, the Council sent a clear message that it is committed to progressive criminal justice reform that dismantles the systemic racial and economic injustice that has only harmed our communities.”
The result was predictable.
New York’s MTA lost more than $1 billion due to this policy, as fare evasion more than doubled and maybe tripled, up to about $700 million in 2022 alone. Stabbings and other violent crimes spiked in 2021 and 2022, because while some fare evaders are just poor folk or sneaky kids, some significant portion is a criminal up to no good. Letting criminals waltz into the subway isn’t great for subway safety. “Virtually every criminal is a fare evader,” MTA chairwoman Janno Lieber said.
In the district, the story was similar, and the cost of fare evasion at least doubled over the Woke decade, from about $20 million to $40 million or $50 million.
But peak woke has passed, and some cities are reversing.
The district’s Metro spent tens of millions to install harder-to-hop turnstiles, and the newish Metro chief, Randy Clarke, has gotten very tough. In Spring 2026, Metro began cracking down on the freeloaders on the bus, where historically one-third of the passengers have skipped the fare. In the last week of May, Metro said, the agency issued 740 fare-evasion tickets and made 46 arrests.
Wherever authorities are taking steps to actually require fares from all riders (as in San Francisco as well), crime and disorder have fallen markedly.
It turns out that preventing theft is a good idea, and celebrating theft is a bad idea!
