Enforcing the law regarding smaller crimes is not just a quality-of-life issue. Often, it helps apprehend dangerous or violent criminals who have a similar disregard for minor legal infractions as they do major crimes.
Nearly half of the 2,502 people arrested in New York City this year for fare evasion had open warrants for other crimes, ranging from drug charges to felony assault, weapon possession, and even murder and attempted murder. As it turns out, criminals who are willing to stab a man over drugs or randomly stab three women are also going to skip out on paying for the subway.
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Enforcing the laws when it comes to subway fares is important on its own. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority lost $500 million last year in fares due to people simply skipping out on paying, which hampers the city’s ability to run public transportation as it has promised to its residents. But it is also important because it helps police officers remove dangerous people off the streets, such as the 1,136 who have been arrested so far this year.
In the progressive mind, nothing correlates with anything else. A fare jumper is just a fare jumper and knowing he’s a fare jumper tells you nothing else about him. In reality, bad behavior in one domain predicts it in another. https://t.co/27spiGjAgU
— wanye (@wanyeburkett) July 23, 2023
This level of policing and law enforcement is not exclusive to fare evasion. You may remember Daunte Wright as the man who was fatally shot by a police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, after the officer inexplicably confused her firearm for her taser. You may remember some liberal outcry about how Wright was pulled over for an expired registration, which some claimed meant he was killed for “driving while black.”
But Wright also had an outstanding arrest warrant for failing to appear in court on charges of fleeing from police and illegal possession of a firearm. Those charges stemmed from his arrest for an attempted aggravated armed robbery, after which he violated the conditions of his bail. This was yet another example where proper policing for a minor infraction would help put a dangerous criminal behind bars had the officer not committed an inexcusable mistake (or had Wright not attempted to again flee from the police).
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We’ve also seen it with minor crimes that are not actually minor. Being a felon in possession of a gun should be a massive red flag for law enforcement that someone who has already committed a (typically violent) serious crime has a flagrant disregard for the law. We have seen time and time and time again violent felons go on to commit murder after having been in illegal possession of a gun and given weak sentences by soft-on-crime prosecutors because illegal possession is not itself a “violent” crime.
This sort of correction is needed when criminal justice reformers have made it their goal to treat things such as illegal gun possession as a minor inconvenience or fare evasion as something that doesn’t matter. Major criminals commit minor crimes too, and minor criminals can graduate to major crimes when they see just how severely law enforcement is being restrained. New York City’s correction is a necessary one, as the arrest record shows. Other cities should follow suit.