New 800-Cop Crackdown On Farebeating Announced In Harlem

HARLEM, NY — The NYPD is taking dead aim at the tale of two fares.

Inside the 125th Street- Lenox Avenue subway station on Monday afternoon, police department chiefs announced "Operation Fare Play," a weeklong effort to bring "hundreds" of officers from the streets to the subway to combat fare beating.

“Don’t do it. Don’t jump. Don’t crawl. Don’t come through the gate,” NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper, "make the right decision — enter the system properly and lawfully."

The roughly 800 officers will be both uniformed and in plainclothes, officials said.

Kemper cited an already increased underground police presence for a 15.5 percent reduction in transit crime so far in March, compared to the same time last year, despite recent high profile crimes, like the shooting on a Brooklyn A train earlier this month.

"Most of the people committing these crimes are not paying their fare," said Public Information Deputy Commissioner, Tarik Sheppard.

Kemper says that 11 of the 20 gun arrests in the system this year happened when police stopped fare beaters, adding that one such arrest had just happened hours earlier at the Delancey Street-Essex Street subway station downtown.

Officials said that officers involved in the operation will be strategically placed all over the system — based on data and crime reports— and declined to disclose their locations.

Police officials also declined to provide a cost estimate of the five-day operation.

Fare evasion and police presence at subway turnstiles are a major component of the NYPD's transit policing strategy, Kemper said.

As of Monday, 1,700 fare beaters have been arrested by police and roughly 28,000 people were just issued summonses, according to officials.