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05/04/2005:

"Lacking $2 Bus Fare to Shelter, Homeless Get a Free Ride, to Jail"

The M35 bus at night is a place of weary faces and empty pockets. It runs from Spanish Harlem to the largest men's homeless shelter in the city. Every night, men file on to get to a place to sleep. Sometimes they pay the $2 fare; sometimes they pay just a penny.

In recent years, other riders have appeared, just as scruffy but with a different goal. These are undercover police officers, aboard to arrest fare-beaters.

The arrests are part of a policy that began in the 1990's, when the New York Police Department took aim at minor crimes, like unlicensed street peddling and fare-beating. Since then, violent crime has fallen sharply, but arrests for minor crimes remain high. Misdemeanor arrests are up by 60 percent from 1990.

Arrests for minor crimes, the city says, lead to people the police are already looking for and deter more serious crimes.
nytimes.com