Today's Examiner announces Muni: Free rides to be a thing of the past. Well, duh -- should they even be a thing of the present? Political statement makers aside (maybe), we'll admit to no small frustration at dutifully handing in our pass (even though we're occasionally abused just for that) while we see riders we KNOW aren't pass holders riding issue free.

So, now Muni says they're going to "get tough on fare evaders." Good for them, we guess. But ilet's talk about this:

Muni is also exploring the possibility of working with state legislators to decriminalize fare-evasion tickets, Muni Executive Director Stuart Sunshine told the board last week. If the tickets were decriminalized, he said, any Muni employee could hand them out — currently, the agency only employs about 15 officers who are qualified to write fare-evasion tickets, and they focus their efforts on the underground Metro lines.

You have got to be kidding us. Given that one big part of the Muni problem is that their drivers are frequently abusive, rude, and batshit crazy, is the solution to give them the power to write tickets? What's next, giving them guns so they can enforce the tickets? SFist legal counsel "hurricane" Rita, help us make sense of this mess before our brain explodes!