Case study LA: Muggers and drug users are thumbs up on big transit projects, like SJ's BART extension
We are not making this up: Murders. Stabbings. Open drug use. Fights. Welcome to LA's Metro system, which may be giving us an early peek as to what unexpected civic amenities BART to downtown SJ might bring with it. Tim Deegan, the excellent city planning columnist for LA Weekly and Citywatch, provides analysis and first-hand experience.
Three times in two weeks, on May 14, 20 and 28, the LA Times published articles about crimes on the Metro system. In just that two week period, It reported these examples:
Man fatally slashed the throat of a 66-year-old woman as she was getting off a Metro train in Studio City.
Two people were stabbed during a fight that started aboard a bus in Glendale.
Woman was attacked in an elevator at the Vermont/Athens Metro train station.
Driver was stabbed on a bus full of passengers.
A man slashed a woman’s arm with a weapon at a Metro station.
A fight broke out among a group of passengers aboard a Metro bus on Los Feliz Road at South Central Avenue in Glendale, where a man and three teenage boys got off and continued to fight in the street. Two of the four were stabbed.
According to Metro, there were a little over 5 crimes reported per 1 million boardings in March. The total number of Metro bus and train boardings in March 2024 was 25.8 million. Using Metro’s stats that would be 125 reported crimes—averaging four per day—in March alone. That doesn’t include the unknown number of non-reported crimes.
Recently fired LA Metro security chief Gina Osborn claimed last week that 97% of the perps in transit crimes did not possess a fare card when arrested. A card is required to pass through the turnstiles at subway stations. It, or cash, are used to board a bus.
Speaking as a consumer of Metro for the past twenty-seven years, I can attest to the efficiency of Metro buses and trains that I take. The services are good. The trains are where I see the most trouble, ranging from panhandlers and buskers asking passengers for money, to crackheads openly smoking their dope without concern. My Miracle Mile bus stop is another location I often see crackheads lighting up.
The most extreme behavior I’ve seen on a bus is a white male passenger running up and down the aisle screaming “white power”, then verbally confronting and physically attacking the bus driver, and breaking open the emergency exit to flee as the driver was calling the police. This happened at high noon on a Sunday on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.
Read the whole thing here.
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