So having discussed LaVar Ball and the ghost of Stingley, lets look at
one from the Washington Post on fare evasion:
At a recent public hearing on a proposal to decriminalize fare evasion on Metro, D.C. Council member Charles Allen made a shocking admission.
Allen, chairman of the panel’s judiciary committee, is a repeat offender.
This is a setup. Watch the hands....
I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve tapped my card and it gave me the beep that said my balance had dropped below what the fare was,” said Allen (D-Ward 6), a daily bus rider. “And the driver just said, ‘Just fill it up when you get to the station.’ ”
“I’ve never once thought, ‘I’m going to actually get a citation or have a criminal record for riding the bus,’ ” he said.
This is not fare evasion. I repeat: This is not fare evasion. He didn't try to not pay his fare (assuming he didn't purposely leave his card with a low balance with the
intent to beating the fare. He merely discovered that his balance was low and the driver allowed him on the bus anyway. This is an example of the driver using his discretion.
Fare beating is knowing you don't have enough money and deciding to jump the turnstile or bypass whatever mechanism
on purpose. Now watch the trick:
The D.C. Council’s move mirrors a trend in cities across the country based on a growing awareness among lawmakers of how issues such as legacy policing practices, unconscious bias and systemic racism can unfairly target communities based on race or age — even in the seemingly mundane case of fare jumping. [My underlines]
So laws against theft of services (fare beating) is racist because black people (and supposedly the young) are inherently incapable of not stealing services. You cannot come to any other conclusion from this statement.
I mean shit, it's "ONLY" fare jumping. What's there to be upset about. All those people who dutifully save their money in order to pay their fares, day in and day out to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars are just law abiding
suckers. You know, if you're going to decriminalize fare beating then please do offer a refund to all the people who did the right thing.
Fat chance at that happening.
Matter of fact, why not just make public transport free to board. No fares for ANYBODY.
Some legislators are questioning whether fare evasion should be a crime at all, arguing that targeted enforcement campaigns are bound to ensnare poor and low-income people who don’t have the money to pay their fares — let alone fines.
This reminds me of stories my mother told me about when the money ran out the day before pay day and she didn't have enough bus fare money to get home. Do you know what she did?
Wait for it.
She walked home.
There's a story about a man in Detroit who I believe walked many miles to and from work (or at least to a transport spot). Yeah, tell me again how the poor get ensnared again.
You know what I see almost daily? People riding little kids bicycles to and from work. Some on regular mountain bikes. You can get one second hand for next to nothing. It's honest transportation.
“Absolutely there’s been a raised consciousness on this that did not exist 20 or 30 years ago,” said Nassim Moshiree, policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia. “Activism like the Movement for Black Lives has had a positive impact on raising awareness that policing — and the explicit and implicit bias in policing — means that certain communities are impacted in unfair ways. Even when it comes to something like fare evasion.”
BLM thinks there are no "white man laws" that blacks need to respect. That's the new "raised consciousness" that has appeared in the last 20-30 years. So now it's "bias" to expect black people to do little things like pay their fare like everyone else is expected to.
Metro is in the midst of a crackdown on fare evasion, spurred partly by financial pressure and partly in response to heightened concerns about crime in the system. Nearly a quarter of assaults on bus operators, for example, result from disputes over fares.
Next we'll be told that it's racism that causes black people (and the young) to beat up bus drivers who ask that they not steal services from the public. I mean the nerve of these bus drivers to expect black folks to PAY for a bus ride. Don't they know we are owed reparations and shit?
Metro Transit Police Chief Ronald A. Pavlik Jr. estimated that the agency loses up to $25 million a year in unpaid fares — a hefty sum for an agency that just announced that it will seek a $29 million increase in the operating subsidies from the jurisdictions that fund it.
That's a lot of money.
he also thinks that people across demographic boundaries feel a sense of injustice that some people flout the rules and ride free, while others dig deep to pay their fares.
“It’s a fairness issue, across the entire community,” Wiedefeld said. “You have people in those same communities that they’re concerned about being targeted, who are paying their fares. And I think it’s right that everybody pay their fare.”
Joke's on us man. It's not about "fair".
Lawmakers nationwide have become increasingly aware of how citations or arrests for fare jumping can have disparate impacts on low-income riders and communities of color. For some groups, a simple citation or misdemeanor arrest can affect their job, parole or immigration status.
Simple solution. Ready: Don't try to fare beat and there will be no citation or arrest. I know this is hard, but try to follow. If you don't fare beat, they cannot give a citation or arrest you. Then you don't have to worry about your job or parole. Oh and if you are worried about your immigration status...wellll..
That proposal gained traction last month when a New York advocacy group, the Community Service Society, released a report concluding that fare-evasion arrests happen more frequently at stations that abut low-income neighborhoods. In addition, the report said that half of all fare-evasion arrests in Brooklyn involve black men between the ages of 16 and 36, but they represent only 13.1 percent of poor adults. [my underlines]
There are 3 other major racial groups in NY and one major ethnic group, why not tell us about the rest of the demographics?
In the end this is yet another example of liberal white folks aligning with grumpy black folks to lower the expectations that black people be expected to live up the same standards that everyone else is expected to follow. And all this does is lead to resentment by non-blacks, rightfully so, when they are held to account while blacks are allowed to publicly and openly flaunt the rules. You cannot have equality and exceptionalism in the same law (generally speaking). Either we are all expected to pay our fares or we are all allowed to ride for "free" (only tax payer based funding via taxes). That is the only real fair option.
If these kinds of policies continue then the quote at the head of this post cannot be considered a "myth" but a reality.
