Crime is rising at L.A. Metro. Is a new police force the answer?

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Late one recent morning at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, Metro riders waited patiently to catch their trains. They shared the platform with a slew of “ambassadors” wearing bright yellow jackets — uniformed Metro Transit Security Officers and homeless outreach providers.

One provider, Debora Latimer, spends her days walking the grounds of Union Station and engaging with homeless people. “We meet and greet and see if we can supply them with what they may need at that moment,” she said. This could include giving them kits of essential toiletries, connecting them with mental health providers or enrolling them in L.A. County’s Homeless Management System, depending on the situation.

Latimer is one of 96 people specifically working to combat homelessness to “re-envision transit safety.”

That effort began in 2018, but its latest reimagining is the Metro forming its own police force — the latest attempt by California public transit agencies to improve safety for commuters they’re still trying to lure back after the COVID shutdowns.

Since the 1990s, Metro has contracted with the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and Long Beach Police Department to patrol its trains and buses.

With nearly 2,000 buses and more than 400 rail cars, Metro carries a weekday average of nearly 956,000 riders. Through its own community public safety department, Metro will have more control over the areas officers enforce and how often they patrol. Riders could start seeing officers on Metro trains and buses within a year, the agency says , starting with five officers and building to 632 by 2029.

This isn’t the first time Metro decided to take safety into its own hands. After a surge of crime in the 1970s, Metro created its own police force, but merged with LAPD about 20 years later as a cost-saving measure.

But now, the agency says ending its law enforcement contracts will cut down on costs — but only after a two-year budget increase during the transition. The new plan will cost roughly $192.6 million a year compared to the $194 million, and rising, that the current contracts cost. Metro’s total budget for the 2024 fiscal year is $9 billion.

Ridership recovers, crime increases

Public transit ridership across the country — including California’s five largest transit agencies —  has yet to fully recover from the COVID-19 crash . As of April, according to the American Public Transit Association, national numbers were 79% of what they were before the pandemic.

However, ridership has increased each year since the pandemic at each of the big California agencies — Metro, Bay Area Rapid Transit, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, AC Transit and Caltrain.

Transportation makes up about 40% of California’s carbon emissions: Increasing public transit ridership and reducing the number of commuters in cars is crucial to meeting the state’s ambitious goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Metro said it is “optimistic” that its positive ridership trend will continue as it builds the new police force. Crime rates on Metro have increased in each of the past five years, even accounting for the rise in ridership. So far this year, there have been 2.18 crimes per 100,000 riders, compared to 1.2 at this time in 2021 and 0.84 in 2019.

“Crime on transit systems is highly visible because we are one of the last truly accessible public institutions,” the California Transit Association wrote in a statement to CalMatters. “Unfortunately, the crime — both violent and nonviolent — that our transit agencies, workers, and riders experience is not just happening within transit systems. The rise in visible crime is a direct reflection of the larger societal issues we have failed to address as a state.”

Several riders at Union Station told CalMatters they’re generally pleased with the current security, but there are times they feel vulnerable.

“During the day, honestly, it’s pretty safe,” said Evelyn Aguilar, who was heading further downtown on Tuesday. “At night, it gets a little sketchy.”

As for the police force, she said: “It could make safety better, but at the same time I feel like it’s really hard because there are so many trains and so many tracks that it’s hard to pick one to take care of versus the others.”

Michael Saucedo, 34, said he has been taking the Metro since he was 17, mostly to run errands, and says he’s careful. “Honestly, I just keep to myself,” he said. “I’m accustomed to it.”

BART also has its own police force and — after hearing riders say they want more visible enforcement — focused its deployment strategy on raising the number and frequency of patrols. The effort led to a 62% increase in felony arrests and the highest number of illegal firearms seized in one year since 2003. For the past nine months, more than 12% of surveyed riders reported seeing BART officers on their commutes, a record for the agency.

Despite more concentrated enforcement, BART has consistently failed to meet its goal of fewer than two crimes per 1 million riders, and crimes against persons have trended upward over the last year. And there have been some high-profile incidents: Earlier this month, 74-year-old Corazon Dandan died after a man, described by police as homeless, pushed her into the path of an oncoming train .

At a Metro Public Safety Advisory Committee hearing last year, riders said they wanted more security officer visibility, mental health services and homeless services.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass aimed to have 9,500 sworn LAPD officers by June 30 in a plan she announced last year. As of June 25, according to LAPD, there are fewer than 9,000 officers.

When asked if Metro expects similar hiring difficulties, the agency said in a statement to CalMatters that transit forces nationwide have not reported challenges with finding recruits.

As of May, BART police only has 18 vacancies, and has the largest class of officers in the training academy to date.

Community-based alternatives

As it builds the new police force, Metro is also hiring 51% more employees for its community policing programs, raising the total number of employees to 673: Broken down, Metro is investing in 5% more homeless outreach providers, 64% more “ambassadors,” and a huge boost in crisis intervention specialists — from six to 87.

Alfonso Directo Jr., advocacy director at Alliance for Community Transit-Los Angeles, said Metro should be investing even more into these programs instead of a new police force.

“Metro has spent over $1 billion over the last seven years on a failed strategy of policing, and the incidences of unsafety that express on Metro very much call for a different approach, and that approach is into care-based safety strategies,” he said.

Metro estimates that there are about 1,000 people experiencing homelessness on any given night on its property. From last October through May, Metro placed nearly 2,000 people in interim or permanent housing. Ambassadors have reported saving 215 lives since the program began through administering Narcan, CPR and suicide intervention.

“Law enforcement is not going to be equipped to address those issues,” Directo said.

He called attention to the demographics of Metro riders — 8 in 10 live in very low income households and 9 in 10 are people of color.

“Police force on Metro will almost certainly have a racially disproportionate impact and an economically unjust impact as well,” Directo said. “The use of police force is the wrong tool to address quality of life issues, like affordable housing and mental health crises.”

But at the Metro listening session, riders raised concerns about the ambassador program’s limitations, including “their defined authority and inability to step in during instances of threat or harassment.”

BART created similar programs in 2020, but does not currently have plans to grow them.

“At this time, the focus is on maintaining current staffing levels in a challenging hiring environment rather than expansion,” Allison said.

Latimer, the clinician with Metro’s community-based treatment team, said that regardless of any public safety measures Metro takes, the focus should be on the systemic hurdles for unhoused individuals to receive housing or necessary treatment.

For example, she said, the process to construct a 17-story supportive housing high-rise in Downtown Los Angeles has taken nine years so far, and isn’t set to be built until next year.

“Let’s say you put in three more agencies to help with the homeless,” she said. “That sounds great, but we’re all still hitting the same barriers. The policy needs to change, not us.”