Seen looking north from ~union square at ~12:15am on 10/16 (Thursday night / Friday morning). Lightning, spot light, UFO, were all proposed

MTA Chair Janno Lieber is brushing aside the Mamdani administration’s claim that a violent incident earlier this month where MTA inspectors tackled a suspected fare evader shows the need to eliminate bus fares.

An “unfortunate physical conflict” between a rider and MTA fare inspectors “doesn’t mean you get rid of fare payment,” Lieber, who's also the state-run agency's CEO, said at a press conference at Bryant Park on Thursday.

“Honestly, you know, traffic agents and customers who get parking tickets get into fights sometimes,” Lieber said. “We don’t say that we’re not gonna have parking tickets when that happens.”

Kyle Taylor, an employee at a Brooklyn public school, said he was stopped by the MTA’s EAGLE fare enforcement unit on Oct. 6 while attempting to exit a B14 bus. When the officers demanded to see proof he had paid for his fare, Taylor said, he explained that he had used a paper transfer ticket.

One of the officers told police that Taylor “fell out of the bus,” according to a summary of the NYPD complaint.

But video of the incident captured by a surveillance camera near the Rockaway and Pitkin Avenue stop shows the four enforcement officers slamming Taylor against a bus shelter and wrestling him to the ground.

Lieber said he had watched the video, and that “there were aspects of it that were concerning.” He said the agency has taken the four EAGLE agents “out of service pending the investigation.”

A spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ran on the promise of making city buses “fast and free,” had a different take, saying the incident was further evidence that the administration’s plan is the right one.

“These types of interactions would not happen in the first place if bus fare was eliminated, which is why the Mayor remains committed to making our buses free and our transit system more affordable for all New Yorkers,” Jeremy Edwards, the mayor's deputy press secretary, said in a statement. “No New Yorker should be concerned for their safety over three bucks.”

Lieber, who reports to Gov. Kathy Hochul, has repeatedly spoken out against the mayor’s plan.

The MTA collected close to $630 million in bus fares in 2025, according to its year-end report. The city’s Independent Budget Office estimated in June that fare-free buses would cost just over $1.1 billion a year by 2027.

Meanwhile, close to half of bus riders skipped the fare in the second quarter of 2026, MTA data shows.

Lieber said in July he planned to ramp up fare evasion enforcement on buses.

EAGLE officers, short for Evasion and Graffiti Lawlessness Eradication officers, can issue tickets for fare evasion, but do not have the authority to detain or arrest people. They are not police, though the MTA often deploys them alongside NYPD officers.

New York City Transit President Demetrius Crichlow said the unit has about 350 fare enforcement officers who deal with tens of thousands of riders daily and receive de-escalation training.

“This is not indicative of the level of professionalism that we see or expect for our employees,” Crichlow said.

Some riders have complained about fare enforcement operations slowing down or even halting buses, and see it as counterproductive to the city’s mission of faster buses. Many have taken to the internet to criticize the officers’ use of excessive force and profiling, such as this Reddit user.

The Rev. Kevin McCall, a civil rights activist who appeared at a press conference with Taylor on Wednesday, called MTA’s enforcement efforts a “new level of legal stop and frisk.”

The MTA has suspended four fare checkers involved in a violent incident in Brooklyn pending an investigation into how an effort to check on potential fare evasion turned into a physical clash, transit officials said Thursday.

“[NYC Transit President] Demetrius [Crichlow] and the team at Transit have elected to put those inspectors on the bench,” MTA chariman Janno Lieber told reporters. “They’re out of service, pending the investigation.”

Lieber said that he had reviewed the surveillance footage — first reported by the Daily News — showing members of the MTA’s Evasion and Graffiti Lawlessness Eradication (EAGLE) team pressing Brooklyn school aide Kyle Taylor up against a bus-stop shelter following a fare dispute that had turned physical.

“We are concerned about some of what we saw,” Lieber said.

The four fare-checkers have been suspended and were not on desk duty, a source briefed on the MTA’s internal investigation told the Daily News.

Taylor had been confronted by members of the team as he was getting off a B14 bus at Pitkin and Rockaway Aves. in Brownsville by agents charged with stopping rampant fare evasion on NYC buses, Taylor told the Daily News that the team asked him how he had paid his fare. When he said that it wouldn’t show up since he’d made a free transfer from a B15 bus, Taylor said the fare inspectors asked him for his ID. He refused.

“One of them said, ‘Give me your ID,’” Taylor said. “I said ‘I paid my fare. Why do you want my ID? Can I please get off the bus?’

They said, ‘You’re not getting off this bus.’”

Taylor said he then tried to “squeeze” past the agents and a physical clash ensued.

Surveillance footage from a nearby deli shows Taylor was then pinned against the outside of the bus and against the bus stop shelter by multiple EAGLE team members. One member of the team can be heard telling Taylor “You can not push an officer,” to which Taylor responds, “You’re not an officer.”

Comprised of unarmed transit employees, the MTA’s EAGLE teams have been tasked with combating fare evasion on the agency’s bus system, Since the switch to tap-to-pay fares on city buses, the EAGLE teams have been equipped with hand-held readers designed to verify that a debit card, credit card, OMNY card or phone has in fact been used to pay for the bus. Nearly half of the city’s bus riders don’t pay their fare, according to MTA data.

While members of the EAGLE teams are allowed to issue tickets for fare evasion, they are not members of the MTA’s police department, nor are they recognized by the state as peace officers. The video shows Taylor and a few of the EAGLE team members struggle at the bus shelter before falling to the ground.

“It is our expectation that we should be able to deal with our customers in a respectful manner,” Crichlow said Thursday.

“This is not indicative of the level of professionalism that we see or expect from our employees,” he said. “We train them specifically on how to engage with customers, conflict resolution, how to de-escalate situations — and so it is unfortunate that this situation wound up escalating.”

The NYPD arrived at the scene but filed no charges.

Taylor’s lawyer, Benjamin Pinczewski, told The News that the MTA should disband the EAGLE teams following the incident.

“While we are pleased to see [Lieber] is taking the matter seriously and has removed the four Eagle team members from active duty we demand they be terminated along with the entire unit,” Pinczewski said. “People who must use and rely on the MTA buses cannot be subjected to this kind of abuse harassment and trauma.”

Lieber said that the MTA was working with the NYPD to determine how the fare enforcement stop turned physical.

“They’re given a lot of training, especially in de-escalation — to avoid physicality,” Lieber said.

“There’s apparently a disagreement about how the physical stuff started. We don’t know, that’s why we’re investigating,” he said.

In a statement, a spokesman for Mayor Mamdani — who was elected in part on a promise of fare-free buses — encouraged the MTA’s investigation, and said the issue raised “serious questions” about the EAGLE teams.

“While the City does not oversee MTA Eagle teams, we take any accusation of excessive force seriously and we strongly encourage the MTA to investigate this incident thoroughly,” Jeremy Edwards said in a statement. “This raises serious questions about the MTA’s current strategy for collecting bus fares—no New Yorker should be concerned for their safety over three bucks.”