Authorities for Washington D.C.’s mass transit moved its dedicated police force to fare enforcement duty to make sure that bus users pay their fares after data showed that 70 percent of riders have been found walking onto buses without paying.
It turns out that D.C.’s Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is losing nearly $50 million a year to fare skippers.
So, instead of acting as security to make passengers safe, WMTA police officers are being detailed to stand next to buses to convince riders to pay up, according to WTOP-TV.
According to the data, after the pandemic, fare skippers wildly increased. Before 2020, the WMTA saw about 25 percent of riders refuse to pay their fare, but that soared after the Pandemic hit going up to about 70 percent.
“We’re not interested in citations,” General Manager Randy Clarke said last week. “We’re not interested in arrests. The less citations and less arrests, that’s success for us. We just want people to pay their fair share.”
Clarke added that if riders won’t pay, the officers will remove them from the bus.
Is it surprising that this is occurring in one of the most lawless cities in America?
It probably isn’t, but it does show that the dangerous, anti-American lack of ethics that lies at the black heart of the Democrat Party.
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