MTA temporarily suspends fare enforcement teams

MTA temporarily shutting down its Eagle team program, which helps catch fare evaders on the bus. This after a man says that he was punched in the face and thrown to the ground by a group of inspectors. Fox 6 Lisa Evers live on the Upper East Side with a look at how the MTA is responding to this. Lisa. Well, Natasha and Steve, this afternoon, a city public school dean announced he's filing a $25 million lawsuit against the MTA because he says he was attacked and thrown to the ground by these Eagle Team fare evasion teams. And now the MTA is responding, saying that they are being suspended pending an excessive force investigation. In this video of the incident taken earlier this month, you can see what was happening in Brownsville, Brooklyn. It appears to show 53-year-old Kyle Taylor, a Department of Education employee, dragged off a bus for allegedly not paying the fare. As the altercation continues, he ends up slammed against the side of the bus shelter. He says he was punched and lost consciousness after being knocked to the ground. At some point, I was thinking, what are they doing? Like, why are they going so crazy for no reason? And at one point, I was out. I was out on my feet. When I looked at the video, I was confused. Like, why would they keep going? I was not happy that leadership of the MTA and even New York City Transit didn't even hear about that episode until more than a week afterwards. It now appears that there is another episode where that failure to timely report is even more extreme. Now the MTA chair says in no uncertain terms that these Eagle teams will not be back on the streets until their training and reporting protocols have been completely overhauled. As for Mr. Taylor, community spokesperson Reverend Carl McCall says that he's been too traumatized to go back on the bus and even to go back to work. That's the latest on the story. I'm Lisa Evers, Fox 5 News.