The former security director for LA Metro says the Board’s decision to spend millions on transit ambassadors was a mistake. NBC Los Angeles’ Conan Nolan reports.
While the Los Angeles Metro Board approved the deployment of additional public safety personnel including law enforcement officers, a former Metro executive said it may be too late to undo the damage done by a series of bad decisions.
Gina Osborn, a former FBI special agent and intel officer for the United States Army, said Friday the millions of dollars provided by the Board to install more Metro ambassadors was a mistake.
“They are not security,” Osborn said. “They are there to help with wayfinding, answering questions.”
Osborn said the money instead should have been used for more Metro security officers – not police officers – so they can enforce the so-called code of conduct on buses and trains because, according to Osborn, enforcing even less serious violations keeps order.
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“[Riders] are not playing loud music. They are paying the fare. They are not littering but are conducting themselves pursuant to the code of conduct on the website,” she said.
Osborn also said adding 53 more Metro officers to ride buses would not work to prevent violence.
“You have 2,500 buses. You have 20 teams. I don’t know how that’s going to work,” she said.
Another issue, according to Osborn, is Metro not getting its money’s worth from the contracts with the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as well as Long Beach police.
“A person was dead for 4 hours on a subway platform, slumped over on a bench. And four LAPD officers were there. None checked on him,” Osborn described. “That’s the kind of service Metro is getting from their contracts.”
But current officials believe the visible presence of more law enforcement would be a first step toward addressing safety concerns.
“We have not only bus deputies and rail deputies, but we also have a commuter enhancement team, which is a team of deputies that ride the rails the entire time and get to know the commuters,” Cpt. Shawn Kehoe of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.
He said his department already provided 300 deputies.
“We have 95 cities, over 1,000 square miles of buses, 90 miles of rails, and 60 stations that the LA County Sheriff's Department is responsible for,” he explained.
Kehoe did not confirm how many more deputies will be added after the Board’s directive to surge staffing.
