Sheriff’s Department no longer providing fare enforcement on Metro trains, buses



More than 100 roving security inspectors supplied by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are no longer working on Metro rail systems as of Jan. 1, said a sheriff’s department official on Thursday.

The ubiquitous security assistants in green pants and white shirts who stood on light-rail platforms and boarded train cars in order to weed out fare-evaders throughout Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s rail system were cut out of a contract for Metro rail and bus policing services.

A temporary, two-month contract approved in late December after the old one expired runs through Feb. 28 at a cost of $18.7 million. The contract continues all regular patrols of the Sheriff’s Department’s Transit Services Bureau on Metro trains, stations, platforms and buses with 290 sworn sheriff deputies assigned per day, minus the 106 security assistants who mostly checked to see if riders paid their way after the fact, said Capt. Rick Mouwen, who manages contracts for the LASD’s contract law bureau.

“That function will now revert back to Metro. Metro is doing the fare enforcement,” Mouwen said, adding the transit security personnel will be absorbed into other non-peace officer jobs within the broader LASD.

From as far back as 2003, security inspectors would enforce what was mainly an honor system on subways and light-rails, such as the Red Line, Gold Line, Blue Line and Green Line. Recently, they began using palm-sized card-reading devices to check if a passenger’s TAP card had been swiped. If not, the inspectors had the power to write citations of $75 for fare evasion and up to $250, said LA Metro spokesman Dave Sotero.

Also, they were equipped with walkie-talkie-type radios attached to their bodies to call for backup in order to make arrests or report suspicious activities, he said.

“Metro no longer wanted them for this enforcement,” Mouwen said.

He added that the LASD and Metro are in continuing negotiations over the structure of a long-term policing contract, which would cost Metro about $112 million annually. In December, the Metro staff proposed using Los Angeles Police Department and Long Beach Police Department officers on lines running in those cities, while reducing the deputies’ presence on other lines. The so-called “multi-agency approach” would be a major departure from the exclusive use of the LASD since 2003.

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Indeed, Sotero said Metro is training its own security inspectors to take over fare-enforcement function from the Sheriff’s Department. Metro is training new security personnel as fare-checkers and what Metro once called “the eyes and ears” on its light-rail lines and subways.

Sotero said Metro employs about 27 fare inspectors today and is training more. By April, Metro will have 189 inspectors on the system’s 100-plus miles of rail lines as well as bus lines, dedicated bus ways and bus stops, he said, adding it is nearly doubling what the Sheriff’s Department had provided.

“We believe Metro employees are best positioned to meet our operational needs,” Sotero said.

The Metro Board of Directors is scheduled to take up the issue of a new transit policing contract at its Feb. 23 board meeting at its headquarters in downtown Los Angeles across from Union Station.

A recent survey conducted by Metro found that 29 percent of former riders of Metro buses or trains left the system because they did not feel it was safe to ride.

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