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Swedish Fare Dodgers Organize Against Transportation Authorities
An anonymous reader writes "Every transit network has its fare beaters, the riders who view payment as either optional or prohibitively expensive. Many cities, most notably New York, view turnstile-jumpers as a top policing priority, reasoning that scofflaws might graduate to more serious crimes if left alone. But in Stockholm, the offenders seem to have defeated the system. From the article: 'For over a decade, Mr. Tengblad has belonged to a group known as Planka.nu (rough translation: “free-ride.now”), an organization with only two prerequisites for admission: Members must pay a monthly fee of about $15 and, as part of a continuous demonstration against the fare, promise to evade payment every time they ride. If travelers keep their side of the agreement, the group will cover any of the roughly $180 fines that might result. (An unlimited ride pass for 30 days costs about $120.)'"
It's just an insurance scheme. With heavier penalties, it would not work.
would be charged with criminal conspiracy.
Or the Transit Authority can lower the monthly cost for a full time rider to $14.99, and get the government to covere the difference from tax revenue. It is a socialist country you know.
Just increase the tax on petrol (or whatever is Swedish for gasoline)
This is known as organized crime.
These people are parasites, and leeches, whose evasion is helping to drive UP the cost for everybody else.
Public transportation is en expensive service, mostly subsidized through taxes, these hypocritical parasites help make it that much more expensive for everybody else.
I hope the Swedish authorities take an idea that was floated when the same was about to happen in Denmark.
The fines the "organization" pay, are to be treated as taxable income.
Because the US "justice" system is such a shining example for the world. Threatening college students with decades of prison for "stealing" public research papers. Approving no-knock warrants resulting in hundreds if not thousands of innocent deaths. Militarization of police forces and the use of SWAT teams for even the most benign crimes. Crushing people pirating a few songs/movies with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Yes, the rest of the world would do well to emulate us.
Since the fine is apparently equal to 12 months of fees to the organization, that implies people only get caught once every two years. As a turnstile jumper you'd actually be better off not being in the organization and putting that $15 a month into a bank account to pay the ticket.
If the government put a couple extra cops on the ticket turnstile beat and doubled the amount of tickets you issued they'd only break even, and if they tripled the number of tickets the group'd start losing cash. If the average jumper starts getting caught every 8 months, that's 1.5 times a year, which means they pay fines of $270, and an insurer needs $22.50 a month in revenue to cover costs. The best strategy would probably be to double the fine and double enforcement on the train lines for a few months. Either option makes the group break even, and combined they'd mean the group has to double it's fee.
Of course back in the real world the Swedish authorities could easily conclude this is just mischievous kids being mischievous, and therefore the group should not be forced out of business.
Nah, that'd also punish people who legitimately forgot their ticket or something along those lines. The much better idea is to increase repeat offender fines. If the first fine's only like $50, but the fifth is more like $500, those fare dodgers would very quickly go broke while normal people wouldn't be affected.
If they tried that the transport authority would go bankrupt within the month. They operate on near zero margin and theres no way they could find the money to double enforcement.
Literally meaning, I ain't got no money. You may know the concept better as, open source.
Weak troll is weak. People who write OSS are willingly giving the product of their efforts away for free. That's got nothing to do with scofflaws who deliberately steal a service that they are not paying for.
The police has absolutely zero reason to help catching fare dodgers.
To understand why so few fare dodgers get caught it's important to understand that the police has no business being in the metro unless they suspect a crime is going on. The only people in the metro are the metro guards who are explicitly -not- police.
This is important because in Sweden only the police can legally detain you which means that when a metro guard catches you without a ticket, you can simply run out of the metro and the guard can't actually legally stop you.
New York City's crackdown on turnstile jumping was part of the Giuliani Administrations implementation of broken window policing. But reducing low level disorder and misdemeanor crime, broken windows policing makes the law abiding residents of neighborhoods feel safer.
"A government’s inability to control even a minor crime like graffiti signaled to citizens that it certainly couldn’t handle more serious ones."
Stopping and arresting turnstile jumpers in particular frequently turned up wanted felons, parole violators, and gangbangers with illegal guns. Arresting them not only took criminal predators, off the streets, it encouraged other criminals to leave their guns at home for fear of having them confiscated. This further reduced their abilities to commit criminal acts in places like subways, and reduced criminal gun incidents when members of rival gangs would bump into each other.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Those services are funded by tax payer money
Those services are partially funded by tax payer money
There, I fixed that for you.
Thiefs think others should pay, news at 11.
I'm from Sweden and well aware of the idiots who think they have the right to pay when others do pay.
They simply suck.
I wish they all got caught and I wish everyone reported these idiots when they saw them.
I still hate that I didn't when I saw someone jump in the back of the bus once here in Örebro.
(Supposedly the immigrants in an immigrant dence part of the town have been doing this / (possibly threatening / ignoring the bus driver) here too.)
Ass-holes, nothing to brag about. Shouldn't any idiot understand that everyone should contribute to the society to get the benefits out from it?
You're free to believe that the fares should be free but not paying isn't the way to make it so. Do it politically and pay through taxes (most of these idiots are likely youths or leftish individuals who don't work anyway) and also realize that demand on transports would increase if everyone could travel for free.
It's hard to describe with words how deeply the core principles of the Swedish state would be violated by your proposal. You are essentially proposing breaking down the entire system of government.
SL (The owner of the metro) is a private corporation that is owned by the local county. Having a private company employ police in the capacity of policemen is unthinkable, it can simply not happen, ever. It violates every principle about division of power and oversight of power.
Yes, the Chief of Police has the authority to send all his police down in the metro to catch people dodging fares if he wanted to. But what sort of perverse mind control would you use on him to make him do such a thing and how many seconds do you think he would remain chief of police if he did so? Catching people dodging fares is not part of his mandate and by ordering the policemen to do so, he'd make them unable to actually prevent crime. That sort of thing would force the oversight board to remove him on the spot.
You're wrong about planka.nu but assuming that you're not Swedish, I forgive you for not knowing.
First of all, they state that public transportation should be considered part of infrastructure, which of course also costs tax money to maintain. You don't need to pay for walking on the sidewalk now do you? That's their message. Personally, I'd add that the ticket system isn't free either so if public transportation were not paid for through other means than taxes, there would be savings like that. And as proof of viability, I offer the city of Tallinn and the city of Mariehamn because they have indeed gone that route (the latter is tiny with only two bus lines, though).
Second, they really do this as a campaign - maybe not the most noble form of civil disobedience since their cost is smaller than the benefit - but they indeed do advocate that tax revenue should be increased, if necessary, to cover the cost. You can call it leeching or even theft but what they're doing is no more lazy than buying a monthly pass is (and actually the need to dodge inspectors technically makes them less lazy).
In my opinion it's a pretty efficient way to campaign for what they want since everyone (with a monthly pass at least) has an incentive to join them and if everybody does, they will have reached their goal. I seriously doubt that planka.nu would be unable to pay the fines on behalf of people in that scenario since ticket inspectors can work fast when they're just looking at valid tickets but if they must constantly stop to issue fines, they will be a lot slower. Not to mention that when caught, people in this campaign would certainly not dig through their wallets and purses all that fast to check if they really have "forgotten or lost" their ticket.
You might not agree with their political goal but you cannot deny that their method for striving towards it is smart and infinitely more efficient than writing petitions to elected representatives.
Sweden operates on a different legal system then the US and England does which often confuses Slashdot posters.
When a government entity wants to do something it has two options, either it makes a department for it such as the police or firemen. Alternatively it can create a corporation with a CEO where the board of directors are the elected politicians.
A corporation is legally no different from any other corporation, the only difference is that the owner is the county or the state. A number of major Swedish corporations such as Vattenfall are owned by the state.
Furthermore a Swedish county (Komun) is an administrative body, not a legislative one. While they can create ordnances they have no legislative power to grant anyone police powers, that is something that has to be done by the parliament.
While we a few years ago introduced the system where public events have to pay for the police protection, that is not a system where the public event gets to hire the police, that is a system where the police arbitrarily decides how much protection the event needs and then sends them the bill. Their options are to not hold the event or pay the bill, they do not get to choose their level of protection.
The Swedish police does not ever guard common stores unless they are actively investigating crime (For instance lately they've been standing around goldsmiths as gold robberies have been on the rise for years), if a store wants active protection it has to pay guards which do not have much more legal authority then a common citizen (Largely they're legally allowed to physically evict you).
People commissioned by the Swedish government can't be fired (To protect them from political pressure) however they can be replaced. That is they get to continue with their current salary for the duration of their term while someone else gets to do their job. The cabinet only appoints the top level directors who are then supposed to be able to handle everything else. I'm not sure about the exact hierarchy of the police but I believe there's at-least 4-5 levels between the cabinet and Stockholm City Police not counting the various oversight boards.
The cabinet also has a very limited ability to control the priorities of their departments, this is the relevant bit of law
"No public authority, including the Riksdag and the decision-making bodies of local authorities, may determine how an administrative authority shall decide in a particular case relating to the exercise of public authority vis-Ã-vis a private subject or a local authority, or relating to the application of law."
Essentially while the Cabinet controls the budget of the department, makes the commisions as well as perform various executive decisions. They can't legally tell the department how to apply the law.
For example when it comes to Filesharing it is illegal but it's on near zero priority for the police because it's a non-jailable offence (Like not paying the ticket in the metro). If the justice minister told the police to prioritise that she would go to jail for constitutional crimes, her only option is to either get the Riksdag to change the law so it's a jailable offense or require the police to focus on non-jailable offences in general.
I don't know where you are posting from, but here in the USA one beer with dinner will not put you over the legal limit. Even for a very petite woman, consuming one beer over the course of a dinner will barely get your BAC above 0.03%. The limit in the USA is 0.08%.
Even if you are in a jurisdiction where one beer puts you over the limit, get real. You are talking about operation of machinery that is highly dangerous when operated improperly. Aircraft pilots are in the same situation, and they are prohibited from any alcohol consumption for 8 hours (or more) before flight. How is your situation as a driver essentially different from that of a pilot? Do you want pilots having a beer with their dinner in the cockpit?