It is New York’s own version of hitchhiking: asking for a swipe of a stranger’s MetroCard.

And just like the hitchhiker’s thumb, it has its own distinctive hand signal, which, if all goes well, results in a free subway ride. If all does not, it often leads to handcuffs.

“The defendant moved his hand in a back-and-forth motion, which, based on my training and experience, is typical of asking to be swiped into the subway system,” Officer Kentrevo Mills of a transit counterterrorism unit in the New York Police Department stated in an arrest affidavit for a man beseeching swipes in February in the station at Lexington Avenue and 125th Street.

For years, the police have been arresting people for asking for swipes in front of the turnstiles. That changed last month, when the police decided to try a more lenient approach against swipe-beggars and other low-level rule breakers, at least in Manhattan. Now officers are supposed to issue a ticket or court summons rather than make an arrest.

But new statistics and a review of court records show, for the first time, the lengths the police had previously gone to try to stamp out the practice of swipe-begging. Even counterterrorism officers had arrested violators.