“Blacks Can’t Jump”: The Racialization of Transit Police Responses to Fare Evasion

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/21533687211007548
• Author: TaLisa J. Carter,Lallen T. Johnson
• Date: 01 October 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

“Blacks Can’t Jump”: The

Racialization of Transit Police

Responses to Fare Evasion

TaLisa J. Carter

1

and Lallen T. Johnson

1

Abstract

This study demonstrates that racially disparate fare evasion citation outcomes are the

product of racialized social systems that allow transit police officers to determine

the belongingness of Black riders in systems of mass transit. Using citation data from

the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, we test the impact of race and

place attributes on transit officer decisions to allocate punishment for subway fare

evasion using mixed effects logistic regression controlling for individual and contextual

predictors. Although rider racial identity alone proves statistically irrelevant, Black

riders suspected of fare evasion possess an elevated risk for being fined as opposed to

merely being warned at stations located within predominately white neighborhoods

and as stations increase in ridership. These findings demonstrate how transit police

officer discretion challenges Black belongingness on systems of public transportation.

Broader implications of this work include the importance of scholarship linking sta-

tistical disparities to organizational intent and integrating diverse voices in policing

policy development.

Keywords

fare evasion, policing, race, place, order maintenance

Introduction

Black Americans endure an elevated risk of unwanted police contact while in

predominately white neighborhoods. Studies have shown that to be Black while

moving through white space is to invite scrutiny while walking (Fagan & Davies,

1

Department of Justice, Law & Criminology, American University, Washington, DC, USA

Corresponding Author:

TaLisa J. Carter, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology, American University, Kerwin 270, 4400

Massachusetts Av., NW, Washington, DC 20016, USA.

Email: carter@american.edu

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2023, Vol. 13(4) 463–\ 487

2000) or driving (Meehan & Ponder, 2002; Rojek et al., 2012). And, such repetitive

unwarranted police contact undermines police legitimacy (Stewart et al., 2009;

Weitzer & Tuch, 2004), causes high levels of anxiety (Geller et al., 2014), and renders

communities less safe (Kane, 2005).

Despite this knowledge, literature examining the experiences of Black transit riders

in white environments remains theoretically and empirically underdeveloped. This is

surprising, considering recent media reports highlighting the aggressive treatment of

Black transit users by police officers across American cities (DeGregory & McCarthy,

2020). Washington, DC is no exception. Although the public transportation system for

the region—known as Metro—serves a racially diverse population, there are notable

disparities in outcomes for riders. A recent descriptive study by the Washington

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs showed that between 2016

and 2017, Black riders accounted for 91%of the passengers that received citations/

summons but only 50%of the DC population (Banks & Gunston, 2018). Of the Black

riders who received citations, nearly 3

=

4were men and more than half were under age

25.

These patterns are concerning, yet unsurprising in a racialized society. Racialized

societies are comprised of social systems that rely on race as a principle organizing

factor. As a result, racially disparate outcomes, institutional racism, and other racial

phenomena are natural products of these racialized social systems (Banks & Gunston,

2018). Because racial phenomena are a result of broader systemic organization, racism

can manifest in overt or covert ways, making addressing race related issues chal-

lenging. In the United States, for example, racial/ethnic disparities among institutional

outcomes are often acknowledged but not directly linked to organizational intent.

Such a disassociation divorces the institution from accountability by removing

institutional racism from the conversation.

We contend that mass transit police organizations operate within racialized social

systems and thus treat race as a non-factor, which is a natural result of a broader

racialized society. Like many other law enforcement agencies, they too have adopted

ostensibly race-neutral order maintenance strategies that encourage the aggressive

policing of quality-of-life offenses. But by treating race in this way, transit police

agencies devolve wide discretion to transit officers in ways that are consequential.

Absent institutional policy, culture, and practices that explicitly speak to racial con-

siderations, transit officers are increasingly likely to resort to racial cues about

offenders and places to inform punishment allocation decisions.

The policing of fare evasion—defined as boarding or attempting to board a transit

vehicle without paying the proper fare—represents one example of this in practice.

Using data from the Washington (DC) Metropolitan Area Transit Authority

(WMATA) we demonstrate that being situated in a racialized social system implicitly

conveys officers the authority to racialize the punishment decision. Although

the penalty for fare evasion across the transit system is a $50 fine, officers have the

discretion to issue cited riders a warning instead. We show that what shapes the

punitiveness decision is a confluence of rider race and local racial composition.

That is, although Black riders are no more likely to be fined than their white

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