CHELSEA — Plainclothes police stopped a fare beater at an Eighth Avenue subway station Wednesday evening who they later found was carrying a gun, pills and more than $2,000 cash, according to the NYPD.
Officers in the Transit Manhattan Task Force stopped Tyleek McGee, 28, after he entered the A and C stop at West 23rd Street through an exit gate around 6 p.m., according to police.
The officers arrested him and later found he was carrying $2,000 cash and Oxycodone pills, police said.
When they took McGee to a nearby transit district for processing, they saw he was also carrying a loaded .380 Ruger in his Jordan sneaker, police said.
The gun had two armor piercing rounds in the magazine and was later found to have been stolen from North Carolina, sources said.
McGee, of East New York, is no stranger to guns, law-enforcement sources said.
He was shot four times at an entrance to another A/C station at Utica Avenue and Fulton Street in November 2015, sources said.
Police made an arrest in connection with that shooting, but McGee, who has 14 prior arrests, was uncooperative with investigators. Police were trying to talk to him about it Wednesday night, sources said.
McGee was charged with criminal possession of a weapon, drug possession, possessing stolen property, theft of service and criminal trespassing, according to police.
Fare evasion arrests have been a source of controversy across the city recently.
The NYPD touted its "good arrest" just two days after State Sen. Jesse Hamilton and Assemblywoman Tremaine Wright held a press conference announcing they want to officially decriminalize turnstile jumping by state law.
In addition, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced last month that it would stop criminally prosecuting fare beaters beginning this fall.
But Mayor Bill de Blasio has defended fare evasion arrests, saying that the vast majority simply end up in a summons.
“I’m very stringent on this point. You can’t evade the fare,” he said at a news conference last month. "It’s not right. So this is one where there has to be a consequence. What we’re debating here is what type of consequence.”
