With major funding boost, Metro Transit promises to double down on crime, nuisances

By Frederick Melo | Pioneer Press

MINNEAPOLIS - ST. PAUL — When a light rail passenger looks desperate, DonEsther Anderson and the outreach team from A Mother’s Love want to be there to greet them with a small care package comprised of snacks and toiletries.

They also hope to complete a referral form, connecting the passenger within 48 hours to housing services, mental help or programs like the Circle of Discipline, a Minneapolis-based mentoring initiative run in part by former professional boxer Adonis Frazier.

If that passenger doesn’t pay their fare, a civilian transit ambassador will be there to educate them on how to pay, ask them to exit the train or issue an administrative citation — a non-criminal fine roughly equivalent to a parking ticket. And if things get really out of hand, a quick call to Metro Transit police could be in order.

That’s the vision presented Thursday by officials with Metro Transit and the Metropolitan Council, as well as three state lawmakers, all of them members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party who played no small role in directing major new funding toward the transit authority to clamp down on crime and improve the passenger experience.

‘We will enforce the law’

A $2 million cash infusion from a state transportation omnibus bill recently signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz will give Metro Transit’s Homeless Action Team and its social outreach partners expanded resources to work with the homeless and other passengers in crisis, even as the transit authority deploys new officers and contract security to focus on serious crime at peak hours.

Transit officials promised to strike a better balance than in years past between fare enforcement and serious crime prevention, with a focus on both empathetic outreach and improving ridership standards.

“We will enforce the law,” said Ernesto Morales III, a former New York City police officer who was sworn in as Metro Transit police chief in March.

Come October, a new metro-wide .75% sales tax will provide Metro Transit with more than $400 million annually in dedicated funding for operations, maintenance and transit safety, an unprecedented budget boost that will balance what Met Council Chair Charlie Zelle called a perennial structural deficit. It also will allow the transit authority added room to improve the passenger experience, he said.

On Thursday, Morales took the mic at Target Field Station in Minneapolis, joining Zelle, state lawmakers and outreach workers in promising better days ahead for Metro Transit and its nuisance-plagued bus and light rail lines, which have suffered a dramatic loss of passengers since the pandemic.

Hiring challenges

State Sen. Scott Dibble, state Rep. Brad Tabke and state Rep. Frank Hornstein said DFL control of the House, Senate and the governor’s office was key in moving their multiple transportation initiatives and policy reforms forward, including the $2 million, one-year allotment for passenger outreach and intervention. All three are DFLers.

Tabke said when his truck broke down, his sometimes negative experience riding into the Twin Cities for three months from Shakopee helped shape his legislative priorities, and Metro Transit now has no excuses for not delivering an enviable ride worth abandoning a car trip for.

“They’ve got all the money that they need to make this happen,” he said.

Civilian greeters, or transit ambassadors, will soon help direct passengers at busy station stops while issuing fare evaders with administrative citations. By decriminalizing the penalty for fare evasion, the hope is that civilians can take up much of that work, freeing up officers to focus on violence prevention, investigations and serious crime.

It’s unclear exactly when up to two dozen transit ambassadors will be deployed, as the Met Council needs time to determine the total citation dollar amounts and work through other particulars, including hiring and training. And hiring has proven difficult all around during a national labor shortage.

Metro Transit employs about 112 sworn officers out of an authorized strength of 171, but only some 58 officers are deployed on the ground, monitoring stations or riding trains and buses, according to officers interviewed Thursday. Others work in administrative tasks and specialty areas. The investigations unit has dwindled to just five uniformed officers.

Still, some 27 officers are in the staffing pipeline, said Morales.

The transit authority also employs 15 community service officers, usually law enforcement students who work part-time and provide extra eyes and ears, rather than traditional police services.

“We’re trying to hire as many community service officers as we can,” said Drew Kerr, a spokesperson for Metro Transit.

Shifting focus from fare enforcement

Well before the pandemic, some Metro Transit police officers complained their energies were being directed primarily toward fare enforcement rather than investigating serious crime, as only sworn officers could issue misdemeanor citations.

Then came the public health crisis, the murder of George Floyd and a national labor shortage, and with it a huge decline in passenger ridership both nationally and locally, and a visible uptick in nuisances such as smoking, drinking, littering and fighting on light rail and buses.

“We knew this was a growing issue, and the pandemic expanded it, but the Legislature just didn’t make these choices,” said Tabke, a co-author of the transportation bill in the House.

Even basic levels of fare enforcement had become a rarity in recent years. Metro Transit officers issued 1,308 misdemeanor citations for fare evasion in 2019, 573 in 2020 and just 10 in 2021. Citations increased to 49 last year. Officials have noted that fare enforcement slowed in part due to social distancing recommendations.

Even many diehard transit advocates complained that enforcement of basic ridership standards had all but disappeared during the pandemic, and despite some recent gains, ridership to this day remains well below pre-pandemic levels.

Crime reports

Incidents of violent crime, including some fatal encounters, have led Metro Transit to recently contract private security at six transit stations and close certain waiting areas, such as the vertical link between the Green Line’s Central Station platform and the downtown St. Paul skyway off 5th and Cedar Street.

The transit system logged 2,395 crime reports in the first three months of 2023, compared to 1,442 reports in the same period last year. That adds up to about 23.5 crime reports for every 100,000 passenger rides in the early part of this year. Among serious crimes, the largest increases occurred in the categories of drugs/narcotics and drug equipment violations. The largest overall category was property damage.

Transit officials have said some of those increases can be attributed to transit police being more pro-active in documenting offenses in recent months.

Anderson, the chief operating officer of A Mother’s Love street outreach, said she’s seen some improvements on public transit in the past few weeks alone.

“It’s getting better,” she said. “We saw the worst times during COVID, because a lot of the shelters had shut down services and people literally didn’t have a place to go.”

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