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Yesterday, the of Zachary Meredith, who in 2018 boarded a Community Transit bus without paying his fare.

As luck would have it, county sheriff鈥檚 deputies were enforcing the fare that day 鈥� and they found three people who hadn鈥檛 paid 鈥� including Meredith, who had no fare receipt, and no ORCA card.

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It might have ended there, but since he had no ID, an officer ran his prints and found 鈥� he had two outstanding warrants, and he was arrested.

So he sued, saying he was unlawfully detained.

And sure enough, he won.

But is this a victory for the shoplifters?聽Or, in this case, the transit lifters?

Well, let鈥檚 see what the majority of the State Supreme Court actually said.

鈥淲e hold only that this particular method of fare enforcement, as used in this case 鈥� lacked lawful justification,鈥� the ruling said.

And the opinion also states, 鈥淭ransit operators must be able to charge and collect fares from passengers.聽Therefore 鈥� passengers using mass transit must pay their fares, or they may be ejected.鈥�

So even the justices who gave Meredith a pass 鈥� this time鈥撀� agreed that he deserved to be kicked off the bus, just not by an intimidating police officer.

In fact, the court actually complimented other transit systems like King County Metro and Sound Transit for their unarmed聽fare 鈥渁mbassadors.鈥澛燭he court says that if an unarmed聽fare ambassador discovers a transit lifter, they could call an armed officer to kick the guy off and issue a citation.

And I think that鈥檚 exactly what needs to start happening.

Sound Transit is supposed to get 40% of its operating budget through fare collection, but the closest it got was 32% in 2019.聽By 2021 the figure was down to 5%.

You can鈥檛 run transit on the honor system. That only works in Public Radio and Scrabble.

The fare ambassadors need to be everywhere.聽The court says they can鈥檛 intimidate passengers, but if it so happens that Sound Transit can recruit a bunch of former defensive linemen as ambassadors 鈥� or linewomen 鈥� I see nothing in this court decision to prohibit that.

So that either you pay your fare, or give your ID and arrange payment, or鈥撀� a beefy transit ambassador assists your prompt departure and introduces you to the nearest armed police officer.

Politely. This is the Northwest, after all.

Listen to Seattle鈥檚 Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O鈥橞rien weekday mornings from 5 鈥� 9 a.m. on 成人X站 Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the聽podcast here.