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Tuesday, November 20, 2018

DC City Council Passes Bill to Decriminalize Fare Evasion, Cites ‘Racism’

The Washington DC City Council voted 11-2 last week to decriminalize fare evasion on the DC Metro after councilmembers said “90 percent” of the 20,000 riders cited for fair evasion were African-American.

From WUSA 9:

A bill that would decriminalize fare evasion on the DC Metro system passed on Tuesday, with 11 councilmembers voting yes.

The bill prevents those who evade fares from getting jail time and lowers the maximum $300 fine associated with it. Now, a fine may be no more than $50. It is no longer a criminal offense, but a civil offense.

The bill, which was originally introduced by eight councilmembers, was vigorously debated on Tuesday afternoon, with Councilmember Allen and White recalling instances of offenders being arrested.

Allen said on Tuesday that something that these people who described have in common is that, “they’re all residents of color.”

Both White and Allen brought up a report released in September, that more 20,000 citations were issued for fare evasion in a two-year period and more than 90 percent of those riders were black.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who cares what their ethnic origin. They committed a crime. That is racist, since the law is changed for black law breakers. Amazing how the Democrats want equality and then they don't want to treat all people equal and changes the law. HYPOCRITS

Anonymous said...

Well, that's one way to manipulate the stats as 20K criminal arrests just went away. Yes, crime is indeed on the mend.

Anonymous said...

DISGUSTING!

Anonymous said...

take it out of their welfare funds!

Ben in Wicomico County said...

I have very little if any trust in anything DC does. The obvious stupidity of the so call government has eliminated all responsibility for people stealing why not just have free metro and free bus for everyone? That's what this stupid ruling says so why not just do it They've been bleeding government funds for as long as I have noticed.