New York City, New York: MTA Suspends EAGLE Fare Teams After Inspectors Were Accused of Roughing Up Riders

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has suspended its EAGLE bus fare inspection teams across New York City, pulling the inspectors from the field until the agency finishes a review of how they deal with riders and report their run-ins.

MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber announced the stand down on Thursday morning, October 22. He said the teams had failed to tell agency leaders about two physical encounters with passengers, one of them a Brooklyn incident caught on video in which inspectors allegedly roughed up a school dean over the 3 dollar bus fare.

"I am not willing to keep our teams active in the field until I know that all protocols are being followed with respect to customer interactions," Lieber told reporters, according to Streetsblog. "Both how they are conducted but also with respect to the reporting and investigation of incidents. Which is going to happen, and they need to be timely reported so they can be timely investigated. As a result I am ordering an immediate safety stand down until these investigations conclude."

The Brooklyn video and a second, older case

The Brooklyn encounter involved Kyle Taylor, a school dean who says inspectors pulled him into a physical confrontation earlier this month after accusing him of not paying the fare. The incident was recorded, and passenger advocates denounced what the video shows. Lieber said the episode was never reported to his office and that MTA and New York City Transit leadership did not hear about it until more than a week later.

"I was not happy that leadership of the MTA and even New York City Transit did not even hear about that episode until more than a week afterwards," Lieber said, according to the New York Post. "It now appears that there is another episode where that failure to timely report is even more extreme."

The second case is a harassment complaint from a man aboard a Bronx bus, which also never reached senior staff. Lieber said he learned of it only recently, months after it happened. Four inspectors involved in the Brooklyn case have been placed on administrative leave, local reports said.

Taylor filed a 25 million dollar notice of claim against the MTA this week. His attorney, Benjamin Pinczewski, accused the agency of trying to hide what happened. "How could they not have known about it? The MTA tried to cover this up," Pinczewski told the Post.

Enforcement that was not cutting evasion

The suspension lands on a program that was already failing at its stated job. Fare evasion on buses rose from 36 percent in 2022 to 48 percent in the first half of 2026, the Post reported, despite the teams working the system. Officials estimate that nearly half of bus riders do not pay the 3 dollar fare, a loss that runs to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

EAGLE stands for Evasion And Graffiti Lawlessness Eradication. The teams began checking fares in 2008, when Select Bus Service routes started requiring riders to pay at a street kiosk and board through any door. The program expanded to local buses in 2023.

Lieber assigned the review to MTA Chief of Security Michael Kemper, a former NYPD Chief of Transit. The teams stay benched until the review concludes. For now, fare inspection on city buses is paused, and the argument over the 3 dollar fare is open again.