With the Long Beach Police Department announcing that it will be ending patrols of the eight Metro stations in Long Beach, transportation agency officials have begun work on a plan to ensure that there’s a security presence at those stations.
Metro’s deputy chief of system security and law enforcement, Robert Gummer, says LA Metro is looking at a variety of options to take over from Long Beach police. Details regarding what the options are were not available.
Gummer emphasized that LA Metro and Long Beach will work together to determine the best solution, continuing the collaborative relationship he says the city and the transportation agency have built.
Long Beach police have been contracted to patrol the A (Blue) Line trains in Long Beach, which connect Long Beach to downtown LA and continue north to Azusa, since 2017.
“I think that the main message is that whatever we come up with, as far as the final solution, is going to be the best fit for all parties involved,” Gummer said. “For the general rider that’s going to be out there on the system, they actually will see probably no real difference as far as the security posture that’s there, if anything with a lot of the new initiatives that we’ve been undertaking over the past couple months, they’re likely to see an enhanced presence.”
Following the end of the contract on Dec. 30, there is the option to extend on a month to month basis through March 2025.
While any extension past December 2024 must be agreed upon by both the Long Beach Police and LA Metro, Gummer says that the transition likely will be completed closer to the end of the possible extension range to ensure that the transition goes smoothly.
“Whatever resources we’re going to have assigned at those stations, we’ll be doing joint patrols, we’ll be doing other exercises, establishing protocols for how to handle arrests,” Gummer said. “I think there’s a desire to handle a lot of those arrests locally, so working through what that looks like, making sure on a day to day basis there’s no drop off and making sure from everyone’s perspective that the posture that we have long-term is something that’s agreeable to all parties.”
Amidst the transition, Gummer says that other layers of LA Metro’s security presence will continue to be important. In addition to officers patrolling stations and trains, LA Metro is piloting a weapons detection system and has already implemented homeless outreach teams, enhanced lighting and safety measures for restrooms and elevators.
“There’s a lot of initiatives that layer on as far as the feeling of safety for passengers and our employees,” Gummer said. “We’re also coming up with new strategies and initiatives along the way, to further enhance how we provide safety to the system.”
LA Metro security works closely with multiple law enforcement agencies already, both those they contract with to patrol their stations and those that patrol nearby areas, meeting with the agencies on a weekly basis. Gummer says that looking forward to the eventual creation of an in-house LA Metro police force, LA Metro will need to build relationships with more law enforcement agencies, especially with planned expansions to Beverly Hills and Pomona.
He says working through the transition will give LA Metro the opportunity to build relationships he says will be necessary for collaboration once Metro has created its independent police force.
“Those relationships are things like joint training and exercises, how to respond and address things such as an active shooter incident,” Gummer said. “Those are things that we actually train with other local police and fire departments on today and we don’t have contracts with them. So this allows us to kind of change and adjust that relationship, and make something that’s more long stay. If anything it’s an opportunity to really test out what that means, build it the right way, so we have a model for the future.”
With Long Beach stations making up just eight of the over 100 LA Metro stations, Gummer reassured riders that the impact of this change should be minimal.
“I think it’s a soft adjustment that we have to make,” he said.
LA Metro’s contracts with its other law enforcement partners, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, have been renewed through the end of the 2025 fiscal year. The agency and its partners have been reviewing their contracts on a yearly basis.
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