It’s such cold comfort to the passengers on LA Metro who have been victims of crime to be told about the good news-bad news stats.
As the Southern California News Group’s transit reporter Steve Scauzillo writes: “Violent crimes rose nearly 16% on LA Metro’s transit system from March to April, while societal crimes such as passengers using drugs, carrying weapons or trespassing decreased by 34% and property crimes dropped 4%, according to a Metro safety report released Thursday, June 20.”
Who, really, cares about trespassing or graffiti when the violence is up 16%?
Same thing here: “Assaults on bus and train operators rose slightly, from 10 in March to 12 in April. The three top assault methods were brandishing a knife, using a knife. or using hands to slap or punch.” Does anyone really care about the “slightly” part?
It’s not only a tragedy for the victims of violent crime on Los Angeles County’s troubled light rail and bus system. It’s a looming disaster for the system itself, which the county’s taxpayers have paid billions of dollars to expand over the last three decades for two reasons: To help Angelenos get around, and to stave off the absurd fact that the county was the only major metropolitan area in the nation — in the developed world, really — without efficient mass transit.
The crime wave has not gone without notice, or proper efforts to rein it in, in county and city of Los Angeles government and law enforcement circles. Metro began a surge in May of extra police officers at crime-prone places in its system after the 10 stabbings and two shootings in April through mid-May. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said this spring: “The recent crime threatens to derail” progress that had been made in getting passengers to return to Metro, post-pandemic, “if we cannot ensure the safety of those who want and need to use the bus and rail system … We have to act to protect that progress by keeping riders safe.”
Yes, we do. But it looks as if the surge needs to get a … resurgence. Metro riders probably appreciate, at a middling level, the unarmed Ambassadors who patrol the system. It’s great that in March alone, they reversed 17 overdoses by administering Narcan. Now, we need to make transit safe for the general public as well as opiod users.