More Crime On The Metro

Wednesday morning I was on my way to work. I decided to take the E4 crosstown bus from Fort Totten to Friendship Heights, rather than ride the Metro all the way around. If I can make the bus connection in a reasonable amount of time at Fort Totten, I will take the E4, because the time is basically the same, and it is quite a bit cheaper. I missed the excitement on the red line, when some teenagers got on the train and it looks like they set off some sort of smoke bombs and then discharged the fire extinguishers in one of the rail cars.

There is a lot of teenage gang crime on the Metro. A lot of it has to do with the student free ride program. There was a time when students could purchase discount tokens to use on the buses when they were travelling to and from school. If they used Metrorail, they had to pay full fare like everyone else. Since that privilege has been abused, it is time to take it away and go back to the bus tokens.

Another thing that needs to happen, is there needs to be a much stronger police presence in the problem areas. There are problems around the UDC and Tenleytown areas and from Gallery Place to Glenmont on the red line, and there are regular disturbances on the lower platform at Gallery Place. Why is there no police substation at Gallery Place, when there is one at Bethesda? If you want to increase ridership, you have to make the Metro safer. Ridership is down, because people are afraid to ride Metro.

More transit police would be part of the answer. They need to be uniformed officers, as well as plain clothes undercover officers riding the trains in the problem areas, and they need to target these gangs of teenagers and young adults with a zero tolerance policy for any and all infractions of the laws pertaining to the public transportation system. In addition, there needs to be a 50% increase in the penalties for any violent crime that takes place on Metrobus or Metrorail. These teenagers who commit violent acts on the public transportation system should be charged and tried as adults, not juveniles, and they should serve hard time in an adult federal prison. Make an example out of them for their peers.

The Metro Transit Police need to enforce the no smoking, no drinking, and no eating laws more vigorously, along with the no littering law. The trains are starting to look like trash dumps. It's time to clean things up.