The tickets had something else in common. Brownsville, the South Bronx, East Harlem, Bed-Stuy (at least eight years ago, when the ticket was issued), all of them are neighborhoods with large black or Hispanic, and very small white, populations. It was then that it became clear to me: the reason for the tickets wasn’t that these Lisa Davises were petty criminals.
If you are the wrong color and live in the wrong part of town, you get criminalized for existing. Then when something does go really wrong, you can be railroaded.
Derreck Hamilton* was a black kid guilty of minor bullshit who spent years and years in prison for a murder he did not commit (because some asshole cop was out to get him and he got railroaded). So, acting like not sending poor, non-whites to prison for basically existing somehow will make life scarier is basically racist bullshit. Or perhaps simply clueless about how things work in this country.
* http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/20/derrick-hamilto...