NYPD Shuts Down Mom & Pop MetroCard Service

Andrew Shiue

Can't the NYPD give small businesses a break? A man who devised a brilliant revenue strategy to reallocate the funds of subway riders was arrested last week in the Cortland Street R station. DNAinfo reports that 52-year-old Darrelle Lawrence shoved cardboard into the MetroCard fare machine and told straphangers that he could swipe them into the stop for just $2 cash. That's a .25 discount (.50 if you're a single ride!), enough to keep Foghat on the speakers for an extra four minutes. But instead of rounding up angel investors, the NYPD charged him with petit larceny, theft of services and criminal trespass.

Lawrence apparently has a long history of entrepreneurship: he's been arrested 44 times on charges of robbery and grand larceny among others. "[Criminals] like this area because there's a lot of tourism," Captain Paul Rasa of the NYPD Transit District 2 says. "[Tourists] don't know—they think this guy is helping them. It's a major inconvenience, and it costs the MTA thousands of dollars." Maybe the MTA should have thought of that BEFORE they hiked up the fare.

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By Christopher Robbins in News on October 31, 2011 1:26 PM

Comments [rss]

Lauryn Doll

Entrepreneurship, eh?

chee1rs

send him to OWS for mediation

Jake

Why is this considered brilliant?? Crooks have been screwing around with turnstile slots and Metrocard machines for years. This is nothing new.

Eggcream

This story is not really news, it's just the account of some fool who got arrested for being a fool.

shinobishaw

Forget about Japan, that is so 90's.....these days we are competing with S. Korea and China. Even the Japanese haven fallen out.

grandeur1

but you don't get charged for anything if you hit a cyclist with your vehicle.

Kimberley Truelove

Yeah, because the fare hike justifies putting cash in this criminal's pocket.

petey2

Maybe part of the reason for the far hike is people like this taking the money from the MTA.

And I do know that there's a lot more reasons that the MTA fails other than criminals stealing the services.

Kimberley Truelove

I was being sarcastic. It's assholes like this that contribute to fare hikes... and I agree, not the sole cause, but I'm glad he was caught.

Dan Dickinson

CR, where is this mystical 25-cent jukebox with Foghat?

aspiringrapper

America will never beat the Japanese if we keep punishing innovators like these.

ktinnyc

You think America is still competing with the Japanese? Did you fall into a coma in 1998 and just wake up now?

aspiringrapper

Time hasn't made them any less superior to us academically or in any number of other areas. And if I had been in a coma since 1998, I'd have suggested caning as a punishment for this person.