Why Police Shot Four People Over $2.90 Subway Fare

gray and red train on train station
Zain Murdock
October 5, 2024

On September 15, N.Y.P.D. officers followed 37-year-old Derrell Mickles into a Brooklyn subway station, allegedly looking to punish him for evading the fare. After Mickles begged the cops to leave him alone, they followed him onto an occupied train and tased him. Then, as Mickles fled the train car, the officers shot him – and three others.

Mickles is currently incarcerated with a $200,000 cash bail. N.Y.P.D. also shot one of its officers and two bystanders, leaving one with brain damage. Still, the police department downplayed its terror, claiming, “We are not perfect.”

But that’s a grave understatement when police consistently outsize the “harm” they claim to prevent. Unpaid $2.90 public transportation fares amount to less than 4% of the M.T.A.’s budget. Fare evasion isn’t violence, but it’s common.

So when N.Y.C. spends hundreds of millions on cops in subway stations, that’s what they’re there for—criminalizing poverty in a city whose cost of living is 128% higher than the national average.

It isn’t unreasonable for New Yorkers to demand safer subways. They would be if public transportation was free and accessible -- with fewer police in them. Because if policing continues down the route of bloated budgets and mass shootings in any city, we’ll all feel the brunt of it.

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