Los Angelenos are steering clear of riding public transportation as open drug use, violence and fatal overdoses skyrocket, recent reports find.
"We don’t even see any business people anymore. We don’t see anybody going to Universal. It’s just people who have no other choice [than] to ride the system, homeless people and drug users," one unidentified train operator told the Los Angeles Times.
Serious crimes such as aggravated assault, murder and rape on LA’s trains and buses increased by 24% last year when compared to 2021, while other less serious crimes increased by 14%, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.
The spike in lawlessness has left many riders unhappy, with LA Metro Safety Officer Gina Osborn reporting last month that the agency recorded a 99% year-over-year increase in complaints from riders over other passengers possessing or using drugs. The LA Metro received 1,385 reports of narcotics use last year alone, according to the LA Daily News.
The train conductor who spoke to the LA Times recounted he sees "horror" on a daily basis, citing how he witnessed a man masturbating in a seat earlier that day, and often sees "sleepers" - people who get high on drugs and fall asleep on train - on his routes.
As of March, at least 22 people have died on public transportation from suspected drug overdoses, which is more than the 21 individuals who died due to various reasons in all of 2022, the LA Times found.
The violence and drug use has apparently kept Los Angelenos away from public transportation, with ridership on the Gold Line, which links East Los Angeles to Union Station, sitting at just 30% of pre-pandemic levels in January, the outlet found. The Red Line, which runs from Downtown Los Angeles to North Hollywood, saw only 56% of its pre-pandemic levels in January.
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Transit officials have responded to the spikes in crime by pledging $122 million to a program in the last year to deploy 300 ambassadors to public transportation. The ambassadors are unarmed and report crimes while also assisting some passengers.
"I do think there’s something about the culture of the riding public, that if they know there’s someone who is empowered to report [illegal activity] that may be a deterrent to the activity itself," Metro Chief Executive Stephanie Wiggins told the LA Times.
However, reporting drug crimes to police often leads to dead ends, the outlet found. Police arrested 49 people on the Red Line over the last three months of 2022, but only one led to a criminal filing as of February.
Drug possession in California is often considered a misdemeanor, and such cases fall down the ranks of importance when stacked up against more serious crimes.
Criminals also target maintenance workers at the MacArthur Park/Westlake station, where 22,000 people board trains daily, stealing from their cars, according to the LA Times. The station sits next to a notorious open-air drug market, with gangs controlling many of the vendors.
"It’s the most challenging [station] relative to drug use," Conan Cheung, Metro head of operations, told the LA Times of the MacArthur Park/Westlake station. "People are loitering there on the plaza and it is spilling into the ancillary areas, which makes it even more of an emergency."
