Bus Crimes On the Decline as Police Step Up Visible Operations
By Toshi Maeda
The number of assaults and robberies on AC Transit buses running through Alameda County has fallen over the past year and police are attributing the results to their new patrol methods: officers visit buses more frequently and are now biking around town in search of tips.
In 2001, there were 15 assaults between January and August, compared with nine in the same period this year. The number of robberies also dropped from eight to two over the same eight-month period, and fare payment disputes fell from 26 to 12, the Alameda County Sheriff's Office said.
Lt. Tom McCarthy, head of the Office's AC Transit Police Services, says that a key factor behind the decline has been the police's "high visibility".
"We do bus boarding, shadowing and bicycle patrol and these are visible deterrents,'' said McCarthy, adding that 27 deputies from his office are boarding and shadowing buses nearly twice as often this year as they did last year.
Four of the deputies are assigned exclusively to bicycle patrol, which was started in full swing when AC Transit purchased three mountain bikes for Police Services last year.
"They put their bike on the rack, get onboard and talk to drivers, especially during layovers,'' said McCarthy.
''Often times, they are the first to bring us information," he said, adding that based on the tips they get, undercover officers are planted "as necessary'' the following day.
Contra Costa County has also kept bus crime rates low - a maximum four felonies committed on buses a year - since the county sheriff's office doubled the number of bus-boarding and shadowing operations five years ago.
"Being seen and being there prevent the crime," said Lt. Bob Sherock, who heads the AC Transit detail of the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office. Besides bus-boarding and shadowing, the number of regular bus security checks his team conducts at more than 10 different locations amounts to 25,000 a year, Sherock added.
AC Transit contracted the Alameda and Contra Costa Sheriff's offices for bus security services after a driver was shot dead in an assault while on duty in Oakland in 1988.
Now, emergency calls and signals from drivers are immediately relayed from the bus line's Central Dispatch to the AC Transit details of the sheriff's offices.
When a dispute between two passengers led to a shootout on a Line 82 bus in April, the incident was witnessed by a handful of passengers as well as a digital surveillance camera installed behind the driver's seat.
"The police took away a remarkably clear portrait of the perpetrator,'' said AC Transit spokesman Mike Mills. The digital cameras are installed in about a third of the AC Transit's fleet of more than 800 vehicles, he added.
In the April shooting, AC Transit dispatchers and Alameda County Sheriff's Office located the bus using the Global Positioning System, an element in the new satellite-based communications system introduced to the AC Transit fleet two years ago, along with the electronic fare collection boxes.
"Coupled with digital data radios, the GPS provides our Central Dispatch radio room with up-to-the-minute data on the location of every bus so equipped,'' Mills said. "Each coach shows up on a digital map; and if the driver of one needs emergency assistance, not only is that coach highlighted but its radio also takes priority over all others in communication with the dispatchers.''
There is also a semi-secret "panic button'' equipped to the left of the driver's seat, which a driver can hit in case of an emergency.
"This button is like "I need help right now but I cannot talk!''' said one AC Transit driver.
"It gives me a sense of security when I see the red light (of the surveillance camera) flashing, meaning the camera is filming now,'' said Alfonso Martinez, a regular rider.
Martinez added he was "surprised'' to see an undercover policeman take a drunken teenager off a bus he was on in Oakland earlier this year. "That was the first time I saw an undercover operation on a bus in 30 years.''
It was during the late 1960s that robberies and assaults on public buses became
so rampant that AC Transit began seriously studying anti-crime security measures.
In the East Bay, a total of four AC Transit drivers have been killed while on
duty since the 1960s. The murder of driver Perseus Copeland in 1965, who was
shot and killed in a robbery, resulted in bus operators' no longer carrying
change.
The three other homicide cases occurred in the 1980s.
"That's not so bad, considering we are here every day, every night,'' a female driver working on a swing shift, who called herself Dee, said of the four murders in the past. "The bottom line is we have to learn how to protect ourselves, use our wisdom and show respect to people.''