Making Public Transit Safer — A ‘Massive Intersection of Crises’

By Peter hite

People don’t want to ride public transit for fear of being harassed like Esther Lee was on a New York subway October 21, 2021. Lee, 41, is a Korean American. She was insulted, spit on, and called “a f***g carrier.” he fil ed -seconds of the ugly encounter on her cell phone. Nobody came to her aid and at 42nd St. Lee got out and switched cars.

Lee reported the incident to New York’s Hate Crime Unit, but Deputy Inspector Jessica Corey told her she had escalated the situation y fil ing it and since the man didn’t use an Asian slur, there was no evidence of a hate crime. However, two months later a Civilian Review Panel saw the video and labeled Lee’s case a hate crime. Then she went public to a local TV station.

“If cases like mine were not being labeled as a hate crime, that meant that many more similar incidents were being mislabeled and dismissed,” Lee said.

Peter Kerre founded Safe Walks NYC in January 2021. He created an Instagram page, setting up a program of volunteers to walk with people to and from transit stops in Brooklyn. In May 2021 Safe Walks expanded to cover anhattan elo th t hey ve een ooding the e or su ays with a massive police presence, increasing surveillance cameras and extracting the unhoused and unwell folks from the transit system but there’s been no indication of what’s being done with them. Many times they end up back within the subway system.”

“Communities were eager for public safety solutions that did not involve law enforcement. Safe Walks was a great fit, especially for o en of color, any of ho reported having negative interactions with the New York Police Department,” Kerre said.

Third, all the homeless who are in crisis due to unemploy ent and financial hardships, and then there is the “elephant in the room”: a breakdown in trust between law enforcement and the community.

Collecting data on ridership, ethnicity, and gender ing Safety Increasing Ridership’ and introduced it February 13. A former law professor who specialized in an ing and housing policy, in has testified si times before Congress on these issues.

“There’s a saying in academia that the plural of anecdote is data, and so we need hard data at this point if we want to develop solutions. What this would do is to give a voice to the millions of transit riders throughout the State of California,” he said.

Once we have that data, then we can start to develop solutions, Min says.

Janice Li is Board President of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART). Her day job is with Chinese for Affir ative Action, a an rancisco- ased organization that has led Asian American civil rights advocacy for ore than years

Li says BART’s pre-COVID riders made 430,000 trips on an average ee day and ade up of Bart’s operating costs, about $1 billion/yr. But during the lockdowns ridership dropped to four percent and has since re ounded to ust of hat it as e ill not continue to e ist if e cannot find ne revenue streams,” Li says.

BART’s average rider has changed. Two-thirds are non-white, one third are in households with incomes under , , and don t o n cars or the oring poor of the Bay Area, BART is an essential mode of transportation.

“BART knows that in order to bring back riders, we must continue to prioritize safety. I am proud of the many new initiatives that we launched over the past three years, including our BART ambassador program, bathroom attendants, elevator attendants, and crisis intervention specialists,” Li said.

Making people feel safe means putting more BART personnel in our stations, at our platforms, and riding trains throughout our -station syste spanning five Bay Area counties, she says.

BART has two new initiatives Not One More Girl, which is a youth-led campaign to address genderbased harassment and violence on BART, and Let’s Talk About Us, an art campaign to bring visibility to domestic violence in AAPI communities.

During an Ethnic Media Services press call last week, Kerre told reporters that in most cases victims were alone. “Not only in the subway but walking from the subway or walking elsewhere in the city,” he said.

“So simply having an extra person with you will a e a very ig di erence erre said if people feel unsafe, a volunteer can ride with them on the subway.

However, it has not solved “the massive intersection of crises” that are at the root of the problem and everpresent on New York subways, says Kerre.

First of those: all the hate crimes mainly targeting the Asian A erican and Pacific Islander co unity (AAPI). Second, all the mentally ill people on the street.

no Tolerance...

these important issues.”

(From page 24)

“Most people set the bar relatively high for reaching out to law enforcement,” Gilhooly added, “thinking that they might need to actually have some physical violence.” But, to enable better understanding of community dynamics and to target investigations on the orst o enders, he said, “Harassment and other forms should also be reported to law enforcement.”

And perhaps “not commonly known,” he said, are other resources available, primarily to victims, that include community outreach specialists “who speak all manners of foreign languages.

For cultural understanding, he said, “being able to com- ould help define the pro le ut so far e or officials haven t done that li e in California in na ed the ill Pu lic ransit for All I prov- unicate in so eone s first language a es it a little it easier to tal a out so e difficult pro le s

“What Senate Bill 434 would do is require that California’s top 10 largest public transit systems collect data from their passengers on the problem of harassment and uncomfortable behavior,” says California State Senator David Min. Min, the only Kirean American in the California Senate, is Vice Chair of the California Asian and Pacific Islander API egislative Caucus.

More accountability for perpetrators of hate crimes

Walt Allen, Covina mayor pro-tem and a 46-year law enforcement veteran, who helps oversee police training for police recruits throughout southern California, also described a need to do more to hold people accountable for their actions, something he felt has diminished in recent years.

“If people are not held accountable, you’re going to have continuous behavior. We need to set an example for those people who do wrong and hold them to the letter of the law.”

He described a new emphasis in police training on investigating hate crimes and dealing empathetically with its victims, and said he has high hopes for the recently enacted CARE act, state Senate Bill 1338, that begins to address the needs of people diagnosed as severely mentally ill.

“These campaigns are creative and engaging ways for our riders to learn what they can do if they witness these situations happening and resources if they are victims or survivors themselves,” Li said.

Cri e on A trains is do n to cri es per million trips. There were two homicides at the 24th St. Mission station last year. “Both times they were conicts that happened in the neigh orhood at the street level, where the victims ended up escaping into our underground system,” Li said.

She says what’s needed is more community-based resources to address homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health crises.

“Severe mental health issues are a driving force behind violent crime in California,” he stated.

“If you tolerate it, you encourage it,” said Denton Carlson, police chief in the northern California city of San Ramon, whose department was able to rapidly respond to and defuse some incidents over the holidays late last year.

“If you don’t take actions to stop it, it’s just going to eep occurring and ourish

“You often hear people say that ‘hey, somebody should do something about that,” Herraiz said. “Well, we’re all somebody who can step up and play a role in our own way in a ecting hat happens in the future