D.C. residents and councilmembers expressed concerns about a new D.C. Council bill to create an enforcement mechanism for fare evasion during a hearing Wednesday.

In 2018, D.C. decriminalized fare evasion, which was previously punishable by a $300 fine, ten days in jail, or both. The move aimed to improve racial and economic equity by replacing criminal enforcement with a $50 civil fine. There was no way, however, to ensure the penalty was actually paid.

The Metro Safety Amendment Act of 2023, proposed earlier this summer by Ward 2 councilmember and chair of the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee Brooke Pinto, would require people accused of fare evasion to provide their true name and address if stopped by a law enforcement officer. (A physical ID would not need to be produced.) If they refused they could be detained by police or issued a fine of $100 dollars. Fines could also be issued for providing false identifying information, although it’s unclear how an officer would know if someone was lying or how they’d charge someone without a fixed address.

“It’s important to acknowledge how we got here and where we are, as we pursue the careful balancing that this bill attempts to get right,” Pinto said Wednesday. “The council had justifiable reasons for wanting to decriminalize fare evasion, given the racial inequity and how fare evasion has been enforced. Recognizing those issues, the bill allows for only a very limited expansion of fare evasion enforcement.”

Pinto and Metro officials have framed the bill as a necessary and overdue measure to reduce violent crime on the rail system. They’ve also argued that lost revenue from fare evasion threatens the agency’s financial health as it faces a steep budget cliff and potential service cuts. But others who testified at Wednesday’s hearing questioned the impact of the bill, especially when it came to unjust policing.

Some of the bill’s opponents argue it would return to a system of criminalized poverty that disproportionately targeted residents of color — and were dubious of claims that it would make the transit system any safer.

“The power to detain is not simply the power to enforce,” said Ward 5 councilmember Zachary Parker at the hearing, asking whether the measure was necessary and, if it was, how to protect “our young people, and especially Black young people who are more at risk of negative encounters with transit police?”

According to a Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs analysis, 91% of fare evasion tickets were issued to Black people between 2016 and 2017 and 46% went to Black people 25 or younger. Despite the fact that Metropolitan Transit Police Department protocol is not to apprehend kids under 18 for fare evasion, the WLC report found that children as young as seven years old have been stopped.

The city has a “Kids Ride Free” program offering Metro cards to those ages 5 to 21 enrolled in a public, parochial, or independent school, or in the care of the District but its rollout has been messy. It’s seen low usage and families have reported students being turned away for forgetting their cards. In her opening remarks, Pinto said that improvements to the program would be part of the council’s efforts to solve fare evasion.

Some witnesses supported the bill, including Metro board member Tracy Hadden Loh who testified in her capacity as a city resident, saying it was no more than a technical correction to an existing law.

“I have heard loudly and clearly from elected officials and the general public that they expect WMATA to enforce these rules, and so I think we’re sending the wrong safety message if we say that one rule doesn’t matter, but others do,” Loh testified.

Metro Transit Police Department Chief Michael Anzallo, expectedly, supported the bill. In his testimony, he said that a WMATA review of data and camera footage from January to mid-Sept. 2023 found that 97% of people who committed violent crimes on the Metro also committed fare evasion during that period. (Anzallo’s testimony was not immediately available online, nor was a copy of WMATA’s data analysis.)

“As [General Manager Clarke] has said repeatedly, not everyone who fare evades commits a crime on the Metro system, but almost everyone who commits crime on the Metro system has fare evaded,” Pinto said.

Carlos Andino, who testified as the associate counsel with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, said the legislation “has nothing to do with safety,” and only risks further harming residents already disproportionately impacted by policing. Throughout the hearing, detractors referenced numerous instances in which a stop for fare evasion ended in police violence. For example, in 2018, MTPD officers pinned a woman down and threatened her with a taser as her top was pulled down, exposing her to a gathered crowd. She was with her two children at the time.

“The bill’s supporters offer no evidence linking serious crimes and fare evasion. Rather, supporters of the bill make a dangerous assumption: those who fare evade must be more inclined to commit violent crimes,” Andino said, adding that a study of fare evasion and crime should consider other factors, like living situations or poverty. “Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest stricter fare evasion enforcement will affect, never mind halt, serious crimes.”

Andino also pushed back against claims that fare evasion is a major salve to Metro’s financial woes. Metro’s own financial review of the $750 million budget gap does not list fare evasion as one of the main drivers. In fiscal year 2022, per WMATA’s data, fare evasion cost Metro $10 million in revenue — with more than 80% of that coming from evasion on the bus, not the rail system. Andino suggested that if Metro wants to link fare evasion to deficit problems then it makes more financial sense for lawmakers to re-up the now quashed fare-free Metrobus legislation. (Also, the money generated from citations or fines all goes to D.C. or the issuing jurisdiction, not WMATA.)

“The council should not use fare evaders as scapegoats for WMATA’s problems,” Andino said.

For Metro’s part, several witnesses, both those for and against the implementation of the bill, recognized the apparent success of Metro’s new higher faregates designed to stop evasion. By August, within weeks of completion, Metro claimed the new gates reduced fare evasion by more than 70%. Coupled with improvements to Kids Ride Free and other Metro programs aimed at helping folks who can’t afford to ride (over the summer, the agency created a program to provide half-off fares to residents enrolled in SNAP benefits), should be what Metro focuses on, according to Katerina Semyonova, who testified on behalf of the D.C. Public Defender Service.

“I think this traditional approach of ‘there needs to be criminalization’ to solve this problem is not the answer here,” Semyonova said. “It’s already being solved otherwise; there are programs in place trying to make Metro more affordable, it’s investing in infrastructure improvements. That should solve the overwhelming concerns of WMATA and the council…why are we reverting to a solution that failed?”