A month ago, LA Metro extended contracts with three policing agencies and expanded the roster of its security officers in an effort to reduce rising crime on buses, trains and transit stations so that riders who had left the system, because they don’t feel safe, would return.
But reports released on Thursday, April 27 by Metro indicate that police and sheriff deputies and Metro’s Transit Security Officers were busy dealing with assaults and drug abuse as crimes spiked in the first quarter of this year.
The number of crimes reported from March 21, 2022 to Feb. 22, 2023 totaled 3,267, about a 15% increase from the same period the year before.
In February of 2023, crimes on the county transit system rose 21% compared to February 2022, Metro reported. During a roughly six-month period from September 2022 through February 2023, crime rose by 8%.
The biggest increase in crime was drug use.
The three policing agencies contracted by Metro — the Los Angeles Police Department, the Long Beach Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — reported a combined total of 50 narcotics incidents in February 2023, compared to just five in February 2022, a 900% increase.
Several Metro board members said that recent increases in patrols assigned by the three law enforcement agencies, plus more patrols from Metro’s Transit Security Officers, have resulted in more arrests. The extra patrols accounted for more narcotics arrests in February, reported Metro.
The agency’s extra emphasis on arresting offenders who use the trains, platforms and bus stops to get high or deal drugs resulted in a 7% drop in reports to its call centers, and a 15% drop in customer complaints via the agency’s Transit Watch app in the last eight weeks, reported Gina Osborn, Metro’s chief safety officer.
In the past eight weeks, 224 citations and 110 warning were issued, while the trio of law enforcement agencies made 280 drug-related arrests, Osborn said. In…
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