He is a turnstile jumper’s worst nightmare.
The MTA ticket office clerk at a Brooklyn subway station wants to see the brazen scofflaw who dodged his fare punished, so he makes an announcement over the loudspeaker.
He hopes his street speeches (in which he describes each fugitive) will attract the attention of the officers patrolling the station.
“So, I’m on the L line at Jefferson Street, and why is this guy in the booth literally making an announcement to the people bouncing through the turnstiles, saying, ‘There’s a guy in a green jacket? A girl and two girls coming down the stairs,” a New Yorker named Trevona says at the beginning of one of his talks. TikTok video from April 14th The title is “So MTA officials are now announcing fare evaders.”
Suddenly, an MTA employee’s voice rang out over the intercom. “MTA police officer…coming down the stairs, green jacket, blue jeans, fare evader!”
Trevona then pans the camera to see two uniformed NYPD officers across the tracks, leaning their backs and feet against the wall, seemingly unfazed by the announcement.
One of the officers had his hands in his pocket, and the other appeared to be fiddling with his cell phone.
“I thought [the police] I was about to run over them, but they were laughing. [poop emoji] On the phone,” Trevona said in the comments section of a 30-second video that has been viewed more than 80,000 times.
In response to TikTok, an NYPD spokesperson said police must monitor violations of traffic rules in order to take action against perpetrators.
The spokesperson added that between the MTA and NYPD, “there is no cross-agency provision for announcing observed fare evaders.”
The MTA declined to respond to inquiries about its agents’ fare enforcement strategy.
