Los Angeles Metro has sacrificed safety on the altar of appeasement to anti-police activists
Condolences and deepest sympathy to the family and friends of the woman who was fatally stabbed in the throat with two small kitchen knives on a Metro train as it approached the Universal/Studio City Metro station early Monday morning.
Police said the woman, who was reported to be in her 60s, was the victim of a random, unprovoked attack by an unhoused man. A suspect was arrested later in the day. Police released his photo because they believe this man has attacked others, and they hope more victims will come forward.
Rides on Metro were free on Monday. “Earth Day is a great opportunity for Angelenos to get out of their cars to try Metro’s expansive transit system and reduce their carbon footprint,” Glendale City Councilman and then-Metro Board Chair Ara J. Najarian said last April.
Los Angeles County voters have been conned by Metro and its politician-leaders into agreeing to four permanent sales tax increases to fund its underutilized expansiveness. Persuaded by pretty paintings of transit-oriented development, with their watercolor trees and gleaming train platforms, L.A. residents fell for hyped-up promises to save the planet with public transportation.
The bitter truth is that Metro has intentionally sacrificed the safety of its passengers and operators on the altar of appeasement to anti-police and homeless activists and the reckless politicians they support.
“To every Metro rider, bus driver, maintenance worker, friend, family member and every day Angeleno who has called my office with concerns about safety on Metro, we hear you,” said County Supervisor and Metro Board Member Holly Mitchell in 2022.
She made that statement when Metro announced its “bold new transit ambassador program to help improve the customer experience.” The agency promised, “The pilot program will employ up to 300 transit ambassadors from diverse L.A. County communities who will be specially trained in customer service and rail and bus safety.”
The ambassadors would wear uniforms and carry radios and cell phones. And prior to being deployed, “all transit ambassadors must complete training by Metro.”
Training in what?
Training in “cultural and situational awareness, unconscious bias training, disability awareness, customer service, trauma-informed response, and other personal and public safety courses.”
It’s a curriculum that teaches how to stand around and never do anything for fear of doing the wrong thing to the wrong person.
If it wasn’t already clear when former L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl gave a lucrative Metro contract to a close friend and made sure it was renewed despite poor performance, Metro is a multi-billion-dollar cookie jar that enables politicians to take care of their friends and allows developers to gain valuable benefits such as density bonuses and regulatory streamlining of projects near current or planned transit lines.
The politicians responsible for running the system have no motive to run it competently. Even if the trains and buses are filthy, unsafe and unreliable, the contracts are still awarded, the density bonuses are still approved, and the four half-cent sales tax hikes are still collected. Like all sales taxes, the Metro sales taxes grab a disproportionately large share of the income of low-income residents.
Metro is now a system that makes working people and students who rely on public transportation compete for space with drug addicts and other troubled individuals who use the trains and stations as all-day campsites.
This is the atmosphere in which a dangerous individual carrying kitchen knives can hang out on a train waiting to stab a woman in the throat and no one notices anything out-of-place, or if they do, they’re afraid that using their radio to report it will get them fired for bias against multiple identities on the cultural awareness list.
Metro says crime is down, but the murder next to Universal City was one of four violent attacks so far this month on the L.A. County transit system. A passenger riding on a bus in Silverlake was stabbed, a bus driver was stabbed in South Los Angeles, and another bus driver was attacked and injured in Santa Monica.
Metro has budget challenges and its board may be hoping to persuade voters to approve another sales tax increase. The watercolor paintings always look beautiful and safe. Don’t fall for it again.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley