Manhattan liberals helped make a cop-killer

On June 30, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D) announced that prosecutors in his office would be instructed to stop enforcing the law against subway fare evasion. Instead, he announced, they would “divert” such thieves to community service programs. It’s not as if Vance is enforcing the law now: only one in four fare-beaters gets served anything other than a civil summons and a fine. Of the 25 percent who are arrested, only a fraction are convicted. So why is Vance making such a big deal about prosecuting even fewer criminals for this crime? The answer lies in the sleazy arithmetic of the anti-incarceration movement. Vance’s decision to intentionally refuse to enforce the law (even more than it is not being enforced already) is part of the politically powerful, bipartisan movement against the imaginary plague of “over-incarceration.”