NYPD overtime pay in the subway went from $4M to $155M this year | Hacker News Reader

NYPD overtime pay in the subway went from $4M to $155M this year

gothamist.com

19 pointswoodruffw21 comments

I ride the subway daily and fully support cracking down on fare jumpers. People have become pretty brazen about it - even many who clearly have the means to pay jump it just because they know no one will do anything about it.

Besides the fact that it's stealing from all the people who do pay, as the resources are stretched that much thinner to keep trains and stations clean despite the extra freeloading traffic (and it really shows), it also likely encourages other lawless behaviors, like littering and aggressive pan-handling on trains when the whole operation feels like no one cares.

The whole situation would be easy enough to fix with better turnstiles but it seems like that's not in the cards.

This is at least 3 levels deep of "why" questions before you can make any progress in solving this problem.

To add, the answers to those 'why' questions are irrelevant if it doesn't also lead to making controversial / uncomfortable decisions.

All of the uncontroversial or comfortable decisions have been tried and failed.

> The influx of officers corresponded to a 2% drop in what police call “major” crimes in the subway

Zeihan analysis * then suggests the problem could be solved outright for $7.55 billion, or in other terms... I'm not sure how much they're paid... 60,000 more officers?

* i.e. "linear regression"

Got to make Wall St rentiers feel snug from a potential pitchfork moment.

$151M to reduce major crime by 2% with a bonus of harassing the unhomed.

And some people wonder why there are calls to defund the police.

For $151M, we got:

* 5 fewer grand larceny

* 65 fewer robberies

* 26 MORE assaults

* 6 fewer rapes

* 4 fewer murders

* 7 MORE burglaries.

All of those seem like statistically insignificant numbers, and the cops just pocketed a lot of over time pay.

But hey, they issued 34,000 more tickets for fare evasion.

Im assuming you don’t live in NYC because if you did you would know how uncomfortable it is to be waiting for the subway with clearly (a lot of) mentally unstable people walking and yelling in circles and you or your loved ones are relatively alone just trying to use public transportation.

100% im glad they spent that money, they need MORE policing in the subways until they find a way to help the mentally ill unhomed.

Why do you think police are the answer to mental health?

What is your answer if a crazy guy showing up in front of your door?

A public space is not "showing up at your door"

Well how about in your neighborhood? In front of your house? Or your kids school’s neighborhood?

Just trying to understand what you can actually do.

I suppose it's one of the aspects of living in a free country that the mentally ill also have the right to freedom of speech even if it makes those around them uncomfortable. It's controversial to force people to take a vaccine once in awhile, I can't imagine how hard it would be to force people to take psychiatric medications every day.

I don't think the police can treat mental illness or build houses for the homeless no matter how much money you throw at them.

I mean... it's not like they solved it in any way shape or form. I only really see cops by the turnstiles which is entirely useless at doing anything about the mentally unstable.

This comparison doesn't make sense because it's not possible to calculate the true number of crimes prevented.

Extrapolating crime numbers from a prior year to the counterfactual only works if every single aspect of society remained identical in every way from year to year, which is never the case.

Sure, you can't say with certainty that this preventes X crimes. But that doesn't mean you can't measure anything. Last year's numbers and the trajectory of the last few years gives you everything you need to make a judgement. This is talked about in the article.

How would you calculate 'the trajectory of the last few years' if you can't calculate the true numbers for any 1 year span of time since the first year of records?

what’s the problem of issuing 34000 tickets for fare evasion?

We just paid $150M to cops to recover 34,000 x $2.95 in evaded fares ($100k). Not counting non-overtime pay. If it costs me $1000 to recover every dollar I am obviously not on board.

It might already prevented another 10M tickets evaded from happening.

OK from one point obviously the cost is too high but that’s a separate story.

Honestly it’s been great they stepped up patrols this year. A fair number of female friends had been staying off the subway because they didn’t feel safe. My girlfriend witnessed a violent robbery just outside our station last night.

I think there’s more important things than cost recovery.

I agree that it would be great if we had gotten a statistically-significant impact on anything other than fare evasion. This does not seem to be the case at all.

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