LOS ANGELES—A boy tucked in between his mother and father fearfully looks across the aisle at a slender Hispanic male in his early 20s laid sprawled across two seats with his mouth open and eyes shut just feet from them on a Metro train.
At the front of the train car, one man begins to talk to himself louder and louder as another man on the other side of the compartment lights up a joint, filling the car with the stench of marijuana.
Recently, drug use, homelessness, and crime are becoming the norm on the Los Angeles Metro Line trains at an alarming rate.
“As you could see, passengers were just smoking weed out in the open on the train in front of little kids with their parents all nervous right there,” former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told The Epoch Times after riding the Gold and Red lines April 19.
The afternoon ride revealed near-constant use of marijuana inside trains and on platforms. At a Hollywood/Western station, empty syringes and bottles of alcohol littered the tracks as several homeless people walked around, dragging their feet in a dazed-like manner.
“Sadly, it’s what we expected,” Villanueva said. “It’s a degradation of the system. It’s accelerating and getting bigger because it’s become a haven for transients, for people that want to use it as a shooting gallery. Look at all the debris from intravenous drug use … That is typical.”
So far this month, four different stabbings have occurred on Metro trains, leaving one man dead. Twenty-one people have died on the system’s buses and trains this year, mostly from suspected overdoses, according to the agency.
As such, people are scared to ride the transit system, Villanueva said, and data is showing the trend.
Even as Southern California’s gas prices skyrocketed to record highs last year, LA Metro’s ridership continued to decline overall. Metro has lost 41 percent of its riders since the pandemic started in 2020, according to the agency.
“Women, in particular, are definitely afraid of going on the train,” Villanueva said.
Ridership among women decreased from 53 percent in 2019 to 46 percent in 2022, Metro’s October survey revealed. Safety from crime, sexual, and racial harassment was top of the list for improvements female Metro riders said they wanted to see.
“The [Metro] board needs to resign en masse, bow their head in shame and ask for forgiveness for the residents of LA County,” Villanueva said.
In Villanueva’s discussions with riders, they tell him they want twice as many police officers on the system, not fewer, he said.
He said the Metro Ambassador Pilot Program launched on March 6 by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority with an aim to replace armed law enforcement with unarmed “ambassadors” is resulting in more crime and passenger anxiety.
According to a statement by LA Metro, the program is a part of the agency’s “reimagined approach to public safety,” and ambassadors “will welcome riders to Metro, answer their questions, connect them to the resources they need and report issues they see.”
The pilot program initially deployed nearly 300 unarmed ambassadors on LA Metro’s trains and buses. Later that month, the agency added another 48 to address the rise in assaults against riders and bus drivers. However, almost half of the new hires are armed, according to the Metro board.
In November 2021, the Metro Board’s police advisory committee recommended canceling police contracts in an effort to reduce armed law enforcement on trains and buses.
After much internal debate, the board decided to extend its contracts on March 23 with the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the Long Beach Police Department to continue providing public safety services for Metro’s 93 stations and 14,000 bus stops systemwide.
In general, crime had been rising in the system in 2022, increasing by 21 percent, according to the latest public safety update issued by Metro. In the past 12 months, Metro has recorded 152 assaults against bus operators—a 15-percent increase.
In February, crimes such as rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and arson, increased by 19 percent compared to the same time last year, according to the report. Lesser offenses, including narcotics, weapon violations, and sex offenses, increased by 37 percent—from 83 to 114, including 14 incidents of sexual battery—compared to February 2022, the agency reported.
Drug use on the Metro system also increased in recent years, impacting rider experience and employee safety, Metro reported in February. Transit officers made 50 drug arrests that month, a 900-percent increase from 2022, though the agency attributed the jump in arrests to recent drug enforcement efforts.
Before 2017, when the sheriff’s department had a contract with Metro, there were no homeless people living on the train platform, Villanueva said. Now, about 5,700 make the trains and platforms home, he said.
Metro officials said in a statement from October 2022 it is difficult to determine how many homeless are on the system, which is not covered by Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s annual homeless count.
Metro was also considering installing “navigation hubs” on the transit system to provide social services 24/7 to the homeless, according to the statement.
Metro is taking steps to address the issues plaguing its system through several new tactics, the agency’s spokesman Patrick Chandler told The Epoch Times.
The transit system started playing classical music over loudspeakers in March to discourage camping and illicit activities in its Westlake/MacArthur Park train station on the Red Line running from downtown Los Angeles to North Hollywood.
The music program is part of a larger pilot program at the MacArthur Park location, which was plagued by graffiti, vandalism, loitering, drug activity, and “all kinds of things under the sun,” Chandler said.
Metro has also installed floodlights at both ends of the platform and restricted access. The agency has partnered with Los Angeles County’s health services and housing departments to provide outreach and mental health counseling, drug addiction treatment, medication stations, and wound-care services.
Despite these efforts, though, Metro’s problems are reflective of what is happening in the community, Chandler said.
“We’re not an isolated system,” Chandler said. “If there’s a problem with drug use [in society], that’s going to show up in our system. We’re not able to isolate ourselves from society, and society rides our system. I can’t speak to why crime might increase or entirely reduce, but at least for Metro, we’re doing our best to protect our riders.”
