New York City cops say the recent move by their state’s governor to deploy National Guard troops in the subway was mostly a symbolic action — that safety matters are under control, nothing to see here, that it was about politics more than anything else. Symbolism. Maybe so. But the deployment got their attention.
Because it was in response to the perception as much as the fact that an active policing presence is necessary on public transit these days. And if a tipping point is reached and people don’t feel safe traveling by bus and train in our cities, transit systems are doomed. Commuters will drive, walk, bike, Uber, beg a ride — anything to avoid being, well, stabbed by a crazy person with no one around to protect us.
And that is exactly the point at which Los Angeles Metro riders find themselves in the midst of a mini-epidemic of stabbings and other altercations on buses and light rail. It was bad enough, having seemingly every train car and back-bus seat occupied by at least one sleeping, suffering, fentanyl-abusing homeless man. When the knives come out, who wants to board?
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When 66-year-old Mirna Soza Arauz was stabbed at 5 in the morning on the B Line train at the Universal City Station in Studio City after her shift as a night security guard at a Tommy’s in North Hills, it was a body blow to us all. “It was a shot across the bow,” Los Angeles County Supervisor and Metro board member Kathryn Barger called it. Because, you know what? The alleged perp, Elliott Tramel Nowden, 45, literally has a prior for battery on a Metro passenger in 2019. He pleaded no contest. He was — quite theoretically, it turns out — “banned” from boarding Metro buses or trains. With no way to enforce that ban, why even bother?
We’re wary of the calls for facial recognition technology everywhere in the Metro system — just because we hate to see our society go there. But we understand the frustration. Put in fare gates to keep the riff-raff away, Metro. Realize that the Ambassador program — unarmed tour guides — is a failure and put that money toward more real police.
Airport-style weapons-scanning before boarding is impractical and will keep away even more riders. But anything short of that is fair game as Metro literally fights for its survival, and its passengers do, too.