NYPD officer punched in face by woman stopped for jumping turnstile, police say

NEW YORK - The NYPD says an officer was punched in the face while stopping a subway fare evader Tuesday morning in Harlem. Police say the 24-year-old woman broke the officer's nose and was taken into custody. 

According to police, an officer approached the woman to give her a summons for going through the turnstile without paying. She allegedly became combative and punched him in the face and head. The officer was taken to the hospital, and charges are pending against the woman. 

The altercation happened just before 8 a.m. inside the 125th Street-Lexington Avenue station -- the same station where a subway rider was pushed onto the tracks and killed Monday. 

It comes after the NYPD announced it would deploy 800 officers to the transit system for a weeklong crackdown on fare evaders. 

"The tone of law and order starts at the turnstiles," NYPD Chief of Transit Michael Kemper said at Monday's announcement. "Fare evasion enforcement and turnstile presence is a key component to our crime-reduction strategy."

Last year, the department issued more than 124,000 civil summonses and more than 1,300 criminal summonses for fare evasion, its highest number of fare evasion tickets in at least five years.

Some in the city say the tactic targets commuters of color. A new report from John Jay College of Criminal Justice found over the last two years, 85% of all criminal summonses in New York City were issued to Black and Hispanic people who combined make up just 52% of the city's population.

"It's clear the NYPD has shifted their focus to this low-level enforcement in their practices, but these racial disparities have continued and they've worsened, actually," said Anna Stenkamp, research associate at John Jay College's Data Collaborative for Justice. "Black and Brown people are overly burdened with the stops and interactions with the NYPD, so I wouldn't expect fare evasion to be any different."

The NYPD said it plans to continue fare-evasion crackdowns like this in the weeks ahead.