The metro is boasting a new security center with a vast number of surveillance cameras watching rider’s every move, but the city is still under tremendous scrutiny for failing to address the threat of harassment and violence on the transit system.
The new center is located above ground in Hyattsville, Md., and feeds real-time information to Metro Transit Police. The numerous cameras placed around every metro station in the area have the capability to zoom, tilt and pan in the hopes of being better able to identify criminal suspects, reports WJLA.
“It’s real time capability but its also the ability to go back in time and identify a potential witness look at the assault, verify what happen,” Metro Transit Police Chief Ron Pavlik told WJLA. “You may not see a cop but someone is watching you, there’s very rare instances or hardly a place in a public setting where a camera won’t pick you up at metro.”
Transit officials credited the updated security system with helping them track down a group of violent teenagers that instigated an enormous brawl at the Gallery Place station in late January. They tracked them to a nearby station where the juveniles were trying to escape, charging six with felony assault and four with felony assault of a police officer, reports The Washington Post. (VIDEO: Bedlam Continues On DC Metro, Council Votes Down Safety Plan)
Residents are skeptical of the metro’s capability to deter crime and remain fearful of being the next victim of an attack, particularly from large groups of youths using the transit system for school on a daily basis. Many are calling for an increased presence of police officers in stations and on trains to act as a physical deterrent, rather than the threat of being seen on a camera above ground miles away in Maryland. The Metro Transit Police Department currently has 491 active officers. (RELATED: Gang Of Youths Brutally Attack College Girl In DC)
Pavlik insists that there is no larger criminal trend surrounding the city’s metro system, but D.C. crime statistics tell another story. The crime rate on the metro was up in 2015 to 6.2 crimes per million riders, up from 5.02 crimes in 2014. What the city calls Part I crimes, including anything from homicide to pick-pocketing, have risen roughly 5 percent in the last year, reports The Washington Post.
The federal government is also turning its eye to the safety of D.C. public transit, threatening to withhold federal funding for the metro system unless security is bolstered. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx said they have a year to create a Metro Safety Commission, replacing the Tri-State Oversight Committee (TOC), which lacked any legal teeth to force implementation of reforms on metro officials, reports WAMU.
“Our expectation that the jurisdictions will address this matter this year has not changed,” Foxx said in a letter to Govs. Terry McAuliffe and Larry Hogan, as well as district Mayor Muriel Bowser. “We expect that your jurisdictions will move quickly to create a federally compliant [safety commission] that FTA can approve.”
In January the Democratic D.C. Council killed a proposal from fellow Democrats supported by Bowser that would have increased legal penalties for crimes committed on the city’s public transit system.
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