Is using the Los Angeles Metro secure?

Commuters in Los Angeles are going by hell. And there’s statistics to show it.

Crime on Los Angeles Metro has risen a staggering 58% since 2019 – regardless of bureaucrats pumping $192 million into security measures.

Crime has risen from 2,747 reported incidents in 2019, to 4,354 in September 2025, in keeping with Metro knowledge. The info in the course of the COVID interval and restoration just isn’t included.

Metro recorded 286 aggravated assaults on buses and rail traces in In 2025 — up 38% from 2017’s 207.

Rider complaints logged by Metro’s Transit Watch app additionally repeatedly flagged the identical issues: open drug use, smoking, alcohol, graffiti, harassment and dysfunction.

Over the course of per week, the Publish confirmed what riders have been describing, witnessing homeless passengers unraveling, pacing the aisles whereas shouting or muttering to themselves.

Drug offers had been carried out within the open, with some clients lighting up in public, filling the sealed prepare vehicles with smoke.

Crack pipes clattered throughout grime-slicked flooring and the bitter stench of sweat and urine soaked the seats. 

A lady even pulled a knife throughout one journey, waved it within the open automotive, earlier than slipping the blade again right into a holster and persevering with on her journey like nothing had occurred.

Safety flickered into view — then disappeared, leaving passengers to fend for themselves.

“You’ll be able to really feel the vitality change when somebody boards in disaster. You don’t know what’s coming subsequent,” mentioned Malcolm Caminero, a USC journalism senior who interned in Glendale, spending as much as three hours a day using buses in 2025.

One night time about 1 a.m., a person who missed his bus bumped into visitors and started pounding his fists on the windshield, screaming to be let on, Caminero recalled. 

“The motive force simply sat again,” he mentioned, noting that police arrived roughly 20 minutes later, delaying the bus one other half hour. 

“I get that lots of people are struggling and that the prepare is likely one of the solely locations they are often,” added one other rider, Elissa Mardiney. “However that doesn’t make it secure.”

Sam Hill, who makes use of a wheelchair and depends on buses and trains day by day, mentioned she’s confronted fixed publicity to drug use, and has been adopted off the Metro a number of occasions.

“Sadly, that isn’t uncommon,” she mentioned.

Her most horrifying second got here whereas using with household. 

“There was a man clearly on medicine swinging a knife at my stepfather,” Hill mentioned. “He ultimately walked away, but it surely took some time.”

The hazard isn’t theoretical — and might flip deadly, at occasions.

In December, a harmful brute who slit the throat of a passenger on the Metro B Line in a chilling, random assault was sentenced to life in jail. 

Mirna Soza Arauz, 67, was using into Common/Studio Metropolis Station when 47-year-old Elliot Tramel Nowden pounced on her unprovoked in April 2024. She staggered onto the platform and died.

Violent crimes towards folks, as a substitute of property or high quality of life offenses, stay essentially the most severe risk that riders face, in keeping with Metro’s newest security report.

There have been 159 such crimes recorded in September, a 20% improve month over month, in keeping with the report, the final crime knowledge the company has made public.

These included 44 aggravated assaults, for a 61% spike and 29 robberies, marking an increase of practically 29% from August to September. There have been additionally 11 intercourse offenses and one reported rape that month.

Even Metro staff weren’t immune. Company information present repeated assaults on operators — together with spitting, punching, shoving, threats and assaults, together with throughout passenger help.

Fare evasion was rampant — and enforcement restricted. One sheriff’s deputy advised The California Publish deputies had been now not permitted to implement TAP card violations, eliminating a device that after led to arrests for excellent warrants and the restoration of weapons and narcotics.

It comes as LA Metro has been overhauling its security efforts — with main occasions just like the World Cup and Olympics on the horizon — and persevering with to pour a whole bunch of tens of millions of taxpayer {dollars} into safety annually with blended outcomes. 

The Metro board in June 2024 permitted the creation of its personal Transit Group Public Security Division -– with an estimated $192 million price ticket.

It marked a sweeping restructuring meant to exchange exterior companies just like the LAPD, LA County Sheriff’s Division and the Lengthy Seashore Police Division with Metro’s personal in-house pressure by 2029.

Beforehand, Metro relied on a patchwork policing mannequin costing roughly $194 million yearly, contracting armed patrols by these exterior companies.

The newest shift got here in January, when the company rolled out a brand new “Care-Primarily based Companies Division” folding its Metro Ambassadors, homeless outreach and crisis-intervention groups into the brand new public security division. 

Metro management framed the rollout in a press launch as a turning level, with Board Chair Fernando Dutra calling it “a big step ahead.”

CEO Stephanie Wiggins mentioned the company was making an attempt to guide with “trauma-informed responses” because it moved towards constructing its totally operational police pressure.

Final 12 months, the company permitted a $5 million finances modification to transform Metro Ambassadors into direct staff, masking wages and advantages.

Sporting vibrant yellow jackets, the ambassadors flow into by stations and transit hubs alongside Metro Transit Safety Officers and outreach groups. Their function stays non-enforcement: partaking homeless riders, distributing hygiene kits and providing fundamental help.

However the company’s homeless outreach figures additionally expose the lifeless finish on the heart of that technique.

Legislation-enforcement logs confirmed a whole bunch of contacts with homeless people throughout the system every month. The overwhelming majority refused providers, as outreach groups made contact — then moved on.

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A Metro spokeswoman identified that violent crime had fallen 8% within the first 11 months of 2025, in comparison with the identical time interval in 2024 — touting it as a win.

“Nothing Metro is engaged on is extra vital than addressing public security on our system,” the company mentioned.

“We’re making tangible enhancements that assist us entice and retain new weekend and occasion riders, contributing to the institution of a brand new tradition of transit in Los Angeles.”