The MTA has removed from duty the fare checkers involved in a violent incident in Brooklyn pending an investigation into how an effort to check on potential fare evasion turned into a physical clash, transit officials said Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201c[NYC Transit President] Demetrius [Crichlow] and the team at Transit have elected to put those inspectors on the bench,\u201d MTA chariman Janno Lieber told reporters. \u201cThey\u2019re out of service, pending the investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lieber said that he had reviewed the surveillance footage \u2014 first reported by the Daily News<\/a> \u2014 showing members of the MTA\u2019s Evasion and Graffiti Lawlessness Eradication (EAGLE<\/a>) team pressing Brooklyn school aide Kyle Taylor up against a bus-stop shelter following a fare dispute that had turned physical.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are concerned about some of what we saw,\u201d Lieber said. It was not immediately clear if the four EAGLE team members had been suspended or placed on modified duty.<\/p>\n Taylor had been confronted by members of the team as he was getting off a B14 bus at Pitkin and Rockaway Aves. in Brownsville by agents charged with stopping rampant fare evasion on NYC buses, Taylor told the Daily News that the team asked him how he had paid his fare. When he said that it wouldn\u2019t show up since he\u2019d made a free transfer from a B15 bus, Taylor said the fare inspectors asked him for his ID. He\u00a0refused.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of them said, \u2018Give me your ID,\u2019\u201d Taylor said. \u201cI said \u2018I paid my fare. Why do you want my ID? Can I please get off the bus?\u2019<\/p>\n They said, \u2018You\u2019re not getting off this bus.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Taylor said he then tried to \u201csqueeze\u201d past the agents and a physical clash ensued.<\/p>\n Surveillance footage from a nearby deli shows Taylor was then pinned against the outside of the bus and against the bus stop shelter by multiple EAGLE team members. One member of the team can be heard telling Taylor \u201cYou can not push an officer,\u201d to which Taylor responds, \u201cYou\u2019re not an officer.\u201d<\/p>\n While members of the EAGLE teams are allowed to issue tickets for fare evasion, they are not members of the MTA\u2019s police department, nor are they recognized by the state as peace officers. The video shows Taylor and a few of the EAGLE team members struggle at the bus shelter before falling to the ground.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is our expectation that we should be able to deal with our customers in a respectful manner,\u201d Crichlow said Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not indicative of the level of professionalism that we see or expect from our employees,\u201d he said. \u201cWe train them specifically on how to engage with customers, conflict resolution, how to de-escalate situations \u2014 and so it is unfortunate that this situation wound up escalating.\u201d<\/p>\n The NYPD arrived at the scene but filed no charges.<\/p>\n Lieber said that the MTA was working with the NYPD to determine how the fare enforcement stop turned physical.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re given a lot of training, especially in de-escalation \u2014 to avoid physicality,\u201d Lieber said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s apparently a disagreement about how the physical stuff started. We don\u2019t know, that\u2019s why we\u2019re investigating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The MTA has removed from duty the fare checkers involved in a violent incident in Brooklyn pending an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,85,267,9,24,264,10,12,63,608],"class_list":["post-374064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}