Thursday editorial: Crime, race and Metrolink
Metro President Bob Baer says that keeping the public safe from crime on the MetroLink line “isn’t just a priority, it is the priority.”
“We’ll spend $10 million this year. We will spend more if we have to, and make cuts in other areas to find the money. The public will see an increased security presence. It will see stricter fare enforcement. Nothing is more important,” he said.
Metro is responding to back-to-back incidents that occurred one night in late July.
A group of teens and 20-somethings assaulted and robbed three teenagers at the Delmar station. Then, about 15 minutes later, the same group is believed to be responsible for attacking and robbing a family that was walking home from MetroLink’s Forest Park station after riding the train from Lambert-St. Louis airport.
Two victims were briefly hospitalized. One required surgery for a fractured eye socket.
Mr. Baer and Metro have been extremely aggressive in the aftermath of the July 26 incidents, in part because they understand they are up against something much bigger.
In November, St. Louis County voters will vote on a half-cent sales tax increase for Metro; its passage is crucial to the regional transit system. The question is whether what happened on July 26 will affect the voting and possibly undermine the region’s huge investment in public transit.
Irrational fear of crime, sometimes expressed in barely coded racial terms, long has plagued transit systems across the nation. Usually it occurs when systems seek to expand from inner cities to suburban areas.
St. Louis is no exception. From its early planning stages forward, the rap on MetroLink was that routes originating in East St. Louis and passing through city neighborhoods were sure to become conduits of crime and disorder, transporting problems to stable communities.
That has not happened. MetroLink security has not been perfect. But, by any reasonable measure, the system is safe.
Serious crime is rare. According to agency data, there were a total of 14 robberies and 24 assaults at the system’s 26 Missouri stations during 2007 — out of 19 million passenger boardings that year. The figures are consistent with national research that shows transit stations are as safe as or safer than the neighborhoods in which they’re located.
Fears about light rail becoming carriers of choice for a criminal element also appear to be unfounded.
A large scale study published in 2002 by the University of California Transit Center examined transit-related crime on Los Angeles’ Green Line. It tracked conditions for the five years before and the five years after the line’s extension through inner-city neighborhoods to “affluent suburban communities.”
The study posed these questions:
“Does a mass transit system that passes through crime-ridden inner city areas help transport crime to the suburbs? Is such a line expanding the range of action of potential criminals by facilitating their ‘journeys to crime’?”
The answers were “no” and “no”: “The transit line has not had significant impacts on crime trends or crime dislocation in the station neighborhoods and has not transported crime from the inner-city to the suburbs.”
There is no evidence that the perpetrators of the July 26 incidents or other troublemakers are using MetroLink as their staging ground or means of transit — despite an irresponsible “exposé” in a local alternative newspaper. On the flimsiest of evidence, the report suggested that thugs and shoplifters are riding MetroLink to the Delmar Loop and the Galleria, giving credence to thinly concealed racist sentiments.
Metro’s $10 million security budget is no small item. The annual budget for the entire St. Louis County Police Department is about $85 million. But the transit agency’s significant spending on security needs to be matched by the public’s rejection of anxiety and cynicism about race and crime.
Flimsiest of evidence? Have you asked the shopkeepers about the shoplifting at the Galleria. It is incredibly bad. The young girls in the shops are terrified and refuse to get involved. I don’t blame them. The thugs are robbing the small store keepers blind. It’s a disgrace. Yet now we are going to have our taxes raised to support the thugs. Why not raise the fares? People that own cars don’t get help to pay for their cars, insurance, gas. Why should these people be subsidized. Maybe they will have less money to spend on drugs. If Metro can’t keep the people safe, then shut it down.
Centrist,
I agree. Why don’t we just go ahead and paste in the link to the RFT’s article on the Metrolink and problems at the Galleria.
http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2008-08-20/news/out-of-control-shoplifting-at-the-st-louis-galleria-violent-attacks-in-the-delmar-loop-is-metrolink-a-vehicle-for-crime/
“Irrational fear of crime, sometimes expressed in barely coded racial terms, long has plagued transit systems across the nation.”
I suppose getting wacked in the head hard enough to break your eyesocket is an irrational fear as well. Come you you PD Libtards
“Serious crime is rare. According to agency data, there were a total of 14 robberies and 24 assaults at the system’s 26 Missouri stations during 2007 — out of 19 million passenger boardings that year.”
How many kids under 17 rode for free and were not included in the totals? I was floored to read in the RFT’s reporting that if you are under 17 state law says Metro cannot fine kids for riding the train w/o a ticket. Stupid, just stupid. How the hell did that law get enacted? How many incidences were not reported because Metro was too inept to take down the information?
“On the flimsiest of evidence, the report suggested that thugs and shoplifters are riding MetroLink to the Delmar Loop and the Galleria, giving credence to thinly concealed racist sentiments.”
I’d say it was just a good use of readily available statistics, not racism.
Hmmmm. PD, it seems to me that you are on the gang plank, and about to go overboard. To deny that the metro-link is not convenient for teen-age scum to use to get where they want to go to do nefarious deeds is ludicrous.
Contrary to what the snobs at the Post-Dispatch claim, articles in the Riverfront Times, including this one, are exhaustively researched. The two reporters with whom I have personal experience, Chad Garrison (author of the Metro piece) and Kristen Hinman are journalists in the best sense of the word. Not compelled to churn out 300 word puff pieces every day, they dig deep into each story they report, doing the legwork that the author of this editorial scrupulously avoided. And, because the RFT is not beholden to the Civic Progress leaders who control the advertising budgets which keep the Post afloat, they report with an aggressive independence that must be the private envy of everyone at the Post.
Say what you will about Metrolink, make fun of the bawdy advertising in the back of the RFT, but don’t insult their excellent, professional reporters, and the revealing work they do for St. Louis week after week.
What level of criminal and anti-social behaviors should we ignore to avoid the PD’s “racism” label? Prediction: Over the next several weeks leading to the election racism will replace man made global warming as the leftist propaganda tool of choice.
Centrist-I believe the easy answer to your question(s) is that it is easier to alter the behavior/lifestyle of the majority who act correclty in society than it is to confront and attempt to alter the behavior of the minority. We certainly don’t want to confront these bad guys and maybe upset and anger them.
When witnesses see thugs rob from stores then run to the metrolink, how are we supposed to think they got there? Would the Post Disgrace have us believe that they drove to the Galleria, committed their crimes, then left on the Metro, go up to U City, then return to the Galleria to get their car back?
Metro does need to step up enforcement of non-paying riders. Of the 20 or so times I’ve ridden they only checked my ticket once, and that was years ago. That would take care of part of the crime and budget problem.
Nick, perhaps I should cancel my PD subscription and read the RFT instead.
Apparently they are the only “news”paper in town still involved in journalism that doesn’t involve the governor’s office. The PD, and in particular the Editorial Page, is getting more pathetic by the day.
When is our society gonna get the big clue??
The cops - even mighty Metrolink cops - cannot be everywhere.
Every store in which you shop could have shoplifters.
Every sports arena you enter could have a lunatic waiting to ambush his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend.
Every mass transit station you use could be visited by a group of sociopathic thugs bent on violence for violence’s sake.
The laws of Missouri state that a motor vehicle driver travelling “peaceably through the state” can transport a firearm without breaking the law, meaning that if you are a law-abiding citizen travelling through Missouri on public roads you may carry a gun for personal protection and be perfectly within the law.
So when are we, as a society, going to allow perfectly law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons on our mass transit systems?
Because the bad guys ALREADY DO.
Criminals break the law.
Don’t make me into a criminal if I carry a gun onto Metrolink for my own personal protection.