Three Surprising Facts About Metro Crime
Crime in the Metro system hit a 5-year high in 2010, according to a WMATA report released today. That’s the banner finding among many grim facts in the report, which you can read in its PowerPoint-y entirety here. Here are some of the other surprises:
A third of the 2,012 arrests in 2010 involved youths.
I’m not sure whether I expected this figure to be higher or lower, but it was definitely interesting. Many of our discussions of Metro crime over the past several months have been about youth on the Metro, such as today’s story embedded at right from MyFoxDC. Last summer’s brawl at Gallery Place sparked several comment threads about race and crime on various sites online, such as DCist. What do you think? Did you find this figure surprising?
4 of 7 sexual offenses “allegedly involved assaults on disabled customers by MetroAccess drivers.”
This statistic, from the WaPo story about the report, paints a very disturbing picture. An account from a WaPo story last April provides some more context:
Both contract drivers [charged with sexual assaults against customers] were hired after passing a background check, said Nikki Frenney, vice president of public affairs for MV Transportation, which oversees the 1,500 drivers in the MetroAccess system for Metro. MetroAccess provides about 7,700 trips a day for people with disabilities who are unable to use regular bus and rail service.
A homicide appears to be missing from the data.
MyFoxDC noted this in their story on the report. Indeed, the WMATA report claims no homicides occurred in the Metro system in 2010, but what happened to the homicide at the Congress Heights Metro Station in May? MyFoxDC asked Councilmember Tommy Wells, who didn’t have an answer for why the homicide might be omitted. The station wasn’t able to get a comment from Metro officials.
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