I don't think there's an expectation of privacy on mass transit.
nor is there on your home computer
judge rules: http://www.eweek.com/security/home-comp ... rules.html
judge rules: http://www.eweek.com/security/home-comp ... rules.html
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This seems less likely to stand up to appeal.hebeters2 wrote:nor is there on your home computer
judge rules: http://www.eweek.com/security/home-comp ... rules.html
At least they have it right in the video "Pick up truck slams into Metrolink train"
Sounds like there's more to the story too.
KSDK - MetroLink train hits truck, five passengers injured
http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/metrolin ... /263431077
Sounds like there's more to the story too.
KSDK - MetroLink train hits truck, five passengers injured
http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/metrolin ... /263431077
http://fox2now.com/2016/10/31/police-ag ... -response/Police agencies fight over Metrolink crime response
ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) - St. Louis City and County Police have warned Metro security to back off. Metro Transportation security is refusing. Fox 2's Chris Hayes discovered the battle over your safety.
FOX 2, through a Sunshine request, obtained two letters. The first, is scathing joint letter from the St. Louis City and County Police Chiefs. It tells Metro, "Your employees are not police officers. The use of patrol canines by the metro public safety department shall cease immediately."
The letter details “(a) citizen was bitten twice by your canine after being sprayed with pepper spray by security officers.”
Chiefs Belmar and Dotson ordered, "The red and blue lights must be removed from your vehicles;" and they criticized Metro for, "improper searches."
Metro's police chief fired back. Chief Richard Zott said his employees would continue to use dogs to, "deter crime and potential terrorist activity.”
He argued his officers are “... (Authorized to do) search and seizure.”
Metro’s chief questions if County and City officers are riding trains. He claims the officers "have failed to answer radio calls,” even one involving "an illegal weapon." Metro's chief said his officers stopped the suspect, called for help, and nobody responded.
County police spokesman Shawn McGuire says crime is down on Metro for a second year. "We`re proud of our officers there. We`re proud of our contract. We think it`s important for people to feel safe on the trains and that`s why we added the 22 officers in March. We wanted
that police presence.”
At about the time or our interview, I started getting calls from other St. Louis County employees. They wanted to remain anonymous, but told me Metro's Chief is politically motivated. They said Metro is making a secret play to start its own police force and county leaders want no part of yet another sub-standard police department.
I questioned Metro's Chief about the allegation.
“I don`t think we've ever said we're going to start our own police department," Zott said. "We have to protect our customers. We have to protect our passengers, regardless of anything else and I think the way to do that is to work collaboratively as partners.”
Zott believes his officers already have police powers.
”The confusion might be is that we have authority under a Federal Compact.” Zott said it’s a Compact signed in 1949 by President Truman. He says Metro prefers a supporting role. He added, “In any organization where you have more than one entity, in this case we have five entities working together, almost like a task force concept, you`ll always have instances of miscommunications and things like that. I think that`s the nature of working collaboratively with a number of different agencies.”
Caught in the middle are riders. Brad Waldrop was the victim of a strong armed robbery caught on camera last fall.
”The County officers listened to me explain that I was involved in a robbery, where someone threatened my life and they just listened, kind of talked to each other and said, uh we can`t help you and they left.”
He said there was confusion because he hit the emergency call button in Clayton, but was robbed on a moving train while it was still in St. Louis.
Waldrop said he later filed a report with St. Louis Police and got results. He added that most people wouldn't take the time to folow up, but he rode his bike to a St. Louis substation where several bicycle cops spent hours reviewing Metro surveilance. He said one of the officers later spotted the suspect and arrested him.
The letters between Belmar/Dotson and the Metro police are actually a lot more revealing than the article (they're linked from the fox2now article).
https://localtvktvi.files.wordpress.com ... 114160.pdf
https://localtvktvi.files.wordpress.com ... 114150.pdf
One of the Metro (contracted) security supervisors rides the train in the early morning. I've been hearing an earful from her about how little she sees police officers on the system and how they don't respond to radio calls - this is discussed in the second letter above.
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It's a money grab for the 2 departments.
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StlToday - Two reported shot on MetroLink platform in Wellston
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... eeb2b.html
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... eeb2b.html
KSDK - Man shot in face near Swansea MetroLink station
http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/man-shot ... /357405501St. Clair County officials are looking for two suspects who shot a man near the Swansea MetroLink station Monday night.
Around 8 p.m., two male suspects approached a man on the MetroLink platform in Swansea and shot him in the face. Police were unable to verify the circumstances that lead to the shooting.
And this is after the other shooting/robbery at the Casino Queen platform last week. Link is in the generic crime thread. No comment from metro.
I think there's something to the argument that turnstiles would help since we don't see this chaos on the buses. But is $2.50 really going to stop someone from bringing a gun on the train?
StlToday - Man shot dead on MetroLink train near UMSL
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... 46a1e.html
StlToday - Man shot dead on MetroLink train near UMSL
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... 46a1e.html
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^ Or see this in any other mass transit system anywhere in the world.
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I completely agree. Turnstiles like they have on the T in Boston. They're about 4 1/2 feet high and go down to the ground. They open for around 3.5 seconds and then close. If you piggyback through it blares an alarm and the MBTA police receive an alert and picture of the perp, and the Charlie card or ticket is usually then voided
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I also agree that turnstiles would help make the metro safer by limiting ridership to people actually using the train to go somewhere. I ride metrolink daily and see a lot of people who do not seem to be using the trains for transportation to any particular place. You see them jumping onto trains at the last second, exiting seemingly at random, exiting then re-entering trains. What are they doing? No idea.
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"Obviously, our public safety department is adding patrols and we are using all available resources," she said in an interview. "We depend on our police partners to keep the transit-riding public safe on the system. We're always looking for ways to make the system safer."
Metro's safety 'officers' sit and watch Netflix on their phones. This is such an asinine response by Metro IMO. My blood boils over this.
Metro's safety 'officers' sit and watch Netflix on their phones. This is such an asinine response by Metro IMO. My blood boils over this.
Many are selling drugs or other stolen items. Sometimes the train is like a Moroccan bazaar.danke0 wrote: ↑Apr 06, 2017I also agree that turnstiles would help make the metro safer by limiting ridership to people actually using the train to go somewhere. I ride metrolink daily and see a lot of people who do not seem to be using the trains for transportation to any particular place. You see them jumping onto trains at the last second, exiting seemingly at random, exiting then re-entering trains. What are they doing? No idea.
Twist
StlToday - Man killed in shooting on MetroLink train had robbed man on train in 2015, authorities say
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... 46a1e.html
StlToday - Man killed in shooting on MetroLink train had robbed man on train in 2015, authorities say
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... 46a1e.html
This is very concerning to me:
I know that the video doesn't stream to dispatch, but there is literally no video? What were the cameras doing? Now those are just there for show?There was no video surveillance available from the train, Metro said.
quincunx wrote: ↑Apr 07, 2017Twist
StlToday - Man killed in shooting on MetroLink train had robbed man on train in 2015, authorities say
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... 46a1e.html
Wait a minute...if this guy confessed to armed robbery in 2015, then why on earth wasn't he in prison?
Guess a guilty plea kept him out.
The shooting came less than six months after the victim had pleaded guilty to a December 2015 robbery on a MetroLink train in St. Louis. Boone was given a suspended seven-year sentence and put on probation in October, according to court records.
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Welcome bit of transparency as Metro has started to publish Public Safety data:
http://www.metrostlouis.org/safety-and- ... vity-logs/
Also, I am pretty convinced that turnstiles are not what we need.... Atlanta spent $120M on a new turnstile system designed to defeat the evasion of the old turnstile system and they still have fare evasion problems and just had a deadly shooting on a train as well. More visible law enforcement -- the real deal, not the security theater kind -- and fare checks is the way to go.
http://www.metrostlouis.org/safety-and- ... vity-logs/
Also, I am pretty convinced that turnstiles are not what we need.... Atlanta spent $120M on a new turnstile system designed to defeat the evasion of the old turnstile system and they still have fare evasion problems and just had a deadly shooting on a train as well. More visible law enforcement -- the real deal, not the security theater kind -- and fare checks is the way to go.
I was on the train last week and saw a sponsored ad in my Facebook feed - it pointed to a site where you could report crime on Metrolink and they were compiling the stats. I clicked through and it looked semi-official, but it had a disclaimer that it was not an official Bi-State site. I don't have the URL handy. I wonder if Metro took offense or saw the writing on the wall and decided to publish their own.STLrainbow wrote: ↑Apr 14, 2017Welcome bit of transparency as Metro has started to publish Public Safety data:
http://www.metrostlouis.org/safety-and- ... vity-logs/
Also, I am pretty convinced that turnstiles are not what we need.... Atlanta spent $120M on a new turnstile system designed to defeat the evasion of the old turnstile system and they still have fare evasion problems and just had a deadly shooting on a train as well. More visible law enforcement -- the real deal, not the security theater kind -- and fare checks is the way to go.
The one big difference is that Metro's is published after the fact. It doesn't look like you can report crime other than by calling on the phone.
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What do we need, an officer at every station and on every train at all times? How much would that cost?
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Just ball-parking but maybe $10M-$12M per year to add 50 uniformed officers for 20 hours a day of security. That would roughly be an officer at each of the 37? stations at all times plus 13 to be on trains, etc. at a rate of $30 per hour for the contracted officers.
^ Too early for me to do arithmetic. Do those numbers include the police officers already (supposedly) paid for?
Also, if you did have fuller police coverage, you wouldn't really need the 120 security guards or 48 public safety officers employed by metro.
I subscribe to the idea that if you had police officers on about half of all trains (always switching at stations and moving around) - including undercover officers - and at most stations (not frequently at say, Sunnen or Forsyth), then you'd have thorough coverage to the point where the day to day crime that goes on would be dramatically reduced.
So the numbers just aren't that daunting. If Metro would actually face realty and realize that 170 of their 220 security people are of no value whatsoever, and re-deploy that money to police, it's not a stretch to get much, much more robust coverage than they do today.
Also, if you did have fuller police coverage, you wouldn't really need the 120 security guards or 48 public safety officers employed by metro.
I subscribe to the idea that if you had police officers on about half of all trains (always switching at stations and moving around) - including undercover officers - and at most stations (not frequently at say, Sunnen or Forsyth), then you'd have thorough coverage to the point where the day to day crime that goes on would be dramatically reduced.
So the numbers just aren't that daunting. If Metro would actually face realty and realize that 170 of their 220 security people are of no value whatsoever, and re-deploy that money to police, it's not a stretch to get much, much more robust coverage than they do today.
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^ yeah, that math was simply my late-night stab at what I think would be enough officers that could cover platforms and trains... it didn't include existing police and I agree that some of those "security theater" staff who don't have policing powers could be eliminated to make things less costly. It doesn't seem like providing sufficient police presence would be unreasonable financially for Metro... but my worry is the elected leaders will force a costly turnstiles system down their throats that does little good and hampers Metro's financial bottom line.
Also, I looked up average police salary for STL area and one source says "The median annual Police Patrol Officer salary in Saint Louis, MO is $52,530, as of March 31, 2017, with a range usually between $43,753-$61,992 not including bonus and benefit information and other factors that impact base pay."
So if you have the equivalent of 150 officers (50 officers each of 3 8-hour shifts) contracted to Metro on a daily basis at $50,000/yr. rate that would be $7,500,000 so you'd still have some breathing room for 10M... seem reasonable?
Also, I looked up average police salary for STL area and one source says "The median annual Police Patrol Officer salary in Saint Louis, MO is $52,530, as of March 31, 2017, with a range usually between $43,753-$61,992 not including bonus and benefit information and other factors that impact base pay."
So if you have the equivalent of 150 officers (50 officers each of 3 8-hour shifts) contracted to Metro on a daily basis at $50,000/yr. rate that would be $7,500,000 so you'd still have some breathing room for 10M... seem reasonable?