November 20, 2018
By Colin Flaherty
The Washington Post and D.C. City Council have finally figured out why 91 percent of Metro fares evaders are black: Racist transit police are targeting black people and ignoring white people who do the same thing.
That is why the city council this week voted to decriminalize citations for the free riders. And why the Metro says it will continue to lose $25 million a year on the turnstile jumpers -- a small price to pay to correct 40, 4,000, 4 million (take your pick) years of racial injustice directed at black people, say members of the city council.
Writing tickets to black people is “endemic of a systemic issue” of white racism, said city councilman Charles Allen. And that is why the City Council voted to change their citation scheme to a system where police can still write tickets, but the Metro will not be able to do anything to collect the fines if the perps refuse to pay.
Under the old system, people were not allowed to register their cars, for example, if an unpaid ticket was on their record. The Washington Post explains it all to us: Allen and his ilk on the council “pointed to a disparity in fare evasion arrests that shows police disproportionately target African Americans.” The City Council relied on a report from the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, which said the Metro had increased enforcement on the trains over the last two years.......... Read more
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