This is the kind of shit that drives me crazy about public policy:
The M35 bus arrests offer a vivid look at the reality behind the debate. They began several years ago, after a complaint by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that a rowdy group of riders had tried to throw a driver off the bus for challenging them over the fare. Since then, undercover officers have monitored the route.
The bus starts at 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, crosses the Triborough Bridge and reaches the shelters on Wards Island, a small island across the East River, in less than 10 minutes.
Homeless men and the lawyers who defend them say that the city created a Catch-22 when it designated the shelter as the place to sleep but then started arresting people who could not pay for the bus to get there. Even if they wanted to walk to the shelter, the men said, they could not, because the only footbridge from Manhattan is closed in the late fall and winter and at other times closes after 8 p.m.
"You're setting me up," said Shavar Shaver, 21, of Brooklyn, who was arrested with five other people for not paying his fare in January. "They're the easiest victims, the homeless people. Its entrapment. Why don't you go fight some real crime?"
These misdemeanor offenses go on their criminal record. So someone who is genuinely destitute trying to get to the homeless shelter could build up a pretty large "rap sheet" of misdemeanor thefts simply because they couldn't afford the bus fare to get there. And these men are really motivated to get to the shelter since if they miss a night, they lose their spot and have to go through the process all over again.
How much does the city spend to arrest these guys?
In interviews, five criminal court judges who spoke on the condition of anonymity questioned the wisdom of the arrests, saying that they wasted judicial resources. A court system spokesman said he could not quantify the cost of arraigning one defendant, a process that involves a judge, a prosecutor, court officers and a court stenographer. Most defendants also spend the night in jail, which costs $163, according to a breakdown by the city.
"I consistently put on the record how outraged I am by the whole thing," said Kathryn E. Freed, an arraignment court judge. "It's a complete waste of the court's time. It takes a lot of person-power to process them, house them and feed them. Meanwhile, the shelter, where they're heading, is set up to do just that."
Perhaps most frustrating, some of the homeless men said, is that even after moving through the legal system, they are in the same predicament they were the day before: They still have to get to the shelter.
Common sense public policy - just make a bus exclusively for indigent people trying to get to their shelters so that you don't have the run-up of legal and other costs to make them criminals for being poor.
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