First responders now often carry Narcan, an opiate reversal, and they need it on the Metro. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported deaths linked to fentanyl rose from 109 in 2016 to 1,504 in 2021, amounting to a 1,280 percent increase. Evidence often sits in a crime lab for months. And as such, the cases often get lower priority than violent crimes. Many drug possession charges in California are misdemeanors or are considered lower-level offenses. As of mid-February, only one of those arrests resulted in a criminal filing, said LAPD Deputy Chief Donald Graham, who oversees the department's Transit Bureau. "We are here to make a change."īut even law enforcement said they can only do so much.ĭuring the final three months of last year, LAPD arrested 49 people on the Red Line for drug-related offenses. Melissa Saenz, one of several newly minted ambassadors on the train, leaned over to tell a reporter that in instances such as this she would "report it" to law enforcement. The ambassadors didn't discourage the man as he threw tobacco on the floor to make room for the weed. Followed by a phalanx of ambassadors, she boarded a Gold Line train from downtown Union Station to Heritage Square in Montecito Heights to show how what she and others call the "eyes and ears" of the system will work.Īs Wiggins talked to reporters, a man in the next car was packing marijuana into a cigar wrapper. Wiggins touted the rollout of the ambassador program to the news media on March 6. "I do think there's something about the culture of the riding public, that if they know there's someone who is empowered to report (illegal activity) that may be a deterrent to the activity itself," said Metro Chief Executive Stephanie Wiggins. It's part of what officials like to tout as a "multi-layered" approach to improving a system that's become emptier and more dangerous over recent years - even as billions have been sunk into expansion of the rail lines. In response to such concerns, transit officials committed $122 million over the last year trying to make the system - composed of 105 rail stations and more than 12,000 bus stops - feel safer by placing 300 unarmed "ambassadors" to report crimes and help passengers. "We've poured so much money into policing, without any measurable impact on care or safety for transit riders." "What will harassment and jailing people who use drugs do to address drug use rates?" said Alison Vu, a spokesperson for the ACT-LA, a social justice advocacy coalition that wants the agency to eliminate contracts with law enforcement. Some board members and social justice advocates have argued for less policing on the system, saying that racial profiling targets many passengers. And the board will soon decide whether to continue their contracts with the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Long Beach Police Department, or come up with another way to secure the system. The transit agency's head of security has said she will be asking the 13-member board - that includes Mayor Karen Bass and the county supervisors - to expand the agency's force of nearly 200 in-house transit officers, some of whom are armed and enforce fare evasion and code of conduct violations. Some are forced to pay the gang taxes, others sell stolen property. Gangs control the area and police say many of the informal vendors on the sidewalks are part of the larger drug economy, wittingly or not. Maintenance crews are often called out for repairs at the station, and when they return to their vehicle they often find it has been burglarized. Earlier this year, a 28-year-old man was fatally stabbed in a breezeway of the station. Last year, there were six deaths and one shooting, nearly all related to suspected drug activity. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority reported that between November and January there were 26 medical emergencies at the station, the majority of them suspected drug overdoses. About 22,000 people board the trains here daily. The station sits next to an open-air drug market that's existed in this dense immigrant neighborhood for decades. The new $2.1 billion Crenshaw Line that officials tout as a bright spot with little crime had fewer than 2,100 average weekday boardings that month.įew stations compare with MacArthur Park/Westlake. For January, ridership on the Gold Line was 30 percent of the prepandemic levels, and the Red Line was 56 percent of them. Even before the pandemic, ridership in the region was never as high as other big-city rail systems. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS)Commuters have abandoned large swaths of the Metro train system.
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