Making Public Transit Safe — Being Resilient to Hate Crimes and Violence
Public fears about using public transit have risen dramatically over the last 2 years, as stories about random, and sometimes fatal attacks on passengers have been frontpage news. The streets around public transportation are no safer.
Women, seniors, people of color, and members of the disabled and LGBTQ+ communities are disproportionately the targets of such attacks and often find no recourse when they report such incidents to local law enforcement.
At an Ethnic Media Services briefing, Feb. 17, speakers – California state Senator David Min, who authored (SB) 434, ʻPublic Transit for All: Improving Safety & Increasing Ridership’ which was introduced in the Senate Feb. 13; Janice Li, Bay Area Rapid Transit Board President; Peter Kerre, Founder of Safe Walks NYC; and Esther Lee, who was attacked on the New York subway system – discussed new legislation addressing the safety of public transportation and the streets; policies to ensure safety on public transport; and ground level initiatives already in place. Esther Lee, a victim, shared her story of being attacked on the New York subway system.
Senator David Min from Irvine
“A good chunk of Orange County, about 20 percent of our population, is made up of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans,” began Senator David Min (D-Irvine).
“At a time when so many of our seniors, and women, and others, feel vulnerable in public spaces, we need to take steps to make sure that our public spaces particularly those that are under the jurisdiction of the government, like public transit, are safe for riders, safe for a vulnerable population.
“SB434 would require that California’s top 10 public transit systems would collect data from their passengers on the problem of harassment and uncomfortable behavior. This is a companion bill to a bill that we passed last year, that was originally meant to require the transit agencies to collect data and to then develop and implement solutions based on that data, to try to make our public transit systems safer.
“Last year we authorized Mineta Transportation Institute, a well-respected non-partisan Think Tank to develop a survey for use by the transit agencies.
“The bill this year is trying to authorize and acquire that these transit agencies take this survey that’s being developed right now, and to start surveying their riders because the problem right now is that we don’t know enough about harassment and assaults on public transit.
“We know anecdotally it’s a problem but there’s a saying in academia that, ‘the plural of anecdote is not data’ and so we need hard data at this point if we want to develop solutions,” said Senator Min.
“This would give a voice to the millions of transit riders throughout the state of California, particularly those who feel like they can’t freely, safely, and comfortably use public transit. We will be able to put some numbers out there – Where does this happen? What types of populations are targeted? What are the types of instances that we’re seeing – and once we have that data, then we can start to use that data to develop solutions.
“Are there certain areas that need more security; maybe need better lighting; do we need training for some of our employees on public transit; do we need more personnel – and we know that it’s a serious problem, but we just don’t know at this point, how serious it is on public transit.
“We know that of the roughly 11,500 hate incidents reported in 2021 and 2022 of anti-Asian hate, two-thirds of them involved harassment such as verbal or written hate speech or inappropriate gestures.
“We also know that other vulnerable communities, women and girls, people of color, disabled members, LGBTQ communities also feel unsafe in public spaces and in public transit, but again right now we just have anecdotal data, we don’t have real data and that’s what we need to do right now, so we think this bill will be an important step towards making public transit safer.
“One of the biggest reasons that public transit is seeing a drop in the ridership is because people feel unsafe on public transit,” said Senator Min.
Janice Li from BART
“The financial situation at BART and public transit across the country, face an existential crisis. BART has historically been very fare-dependent, meaning that pre-pandemic, 70% of our operating budget about a billion dollars a year, was paid for by our fares. When our ridership dip to four percent, when shelter in place began in March 2020, and we are currently at just 40 percent ridership, we will not continue to exist if we cannot find new revenue streams,” said Janice Li, BART board president.
“In the past four years, since 2018, we funded and created several new programs that are almost entirely focused on addressing safety and some of sort of indirect but parallel concerns like homelessness, cleanliness, other such issues.
“Our focus at BART has been to increase presence and more uniform staff in all areas of our system; in our plazas to our Concourse level; inside the fare gates; at our platforms; and in our trains, riding our trains themselves.
“These safety staff are trained, equipped with Narcan, and able to communicate directly with BART police officers for serious emergency situations.
“At all hours of operations in our downtown stations, there is someone sitting in the elevator to ensure that it is a safe space for seniors, people with disabilities, parents with strollers, and others to use.
“We also just reopened several of our underground bathrooms and at all hours of operations, those bathrooms are attended. In one of our busiest stations, having an attended bathroom we have now received zero calls for service.
“People thought that they were going to be drug dens, or people would be in them for forever, that’s not been the case.
“We also piloted and established officially, a BART Ambassador Program. These are non-sworn officers that are just riding the trains, and at our platforms, making sure that folks feel safe; can ask any questions; and when the pandemic hit and we had a mask mandate, they were passing out masks and making sure people were wearing them correctly.
“A couple years ago we passed and funded a crisis intervention team which allows staff who have social work backgrounds to specifically take the time and focus on engaging folks who are experiencing behavioral health crisis disease, who might be under the influence of any substances, and who might be unhoused.
“We as BART believe that having more uniform safety presence will prevent incidents of harassment occurring and BART. Safety presence would be able to intervene, so that such incidents, verbal harassment, does not escalate further into violent or criminal behavior,” said Li.
Esther Lee, a victim of a violent crime on the New York Subway
Esther Lee started with a video what happened in the New York Subway.
Lee, 46 is an educator for over 20 years and a longtime resident of New York City. She is Korean, and never thought, “I would be targeted while riding public transportation in the city I call home,” Lee.
“The video you have just watched took place, Oct. 5, 2021. I was rushing home from work to attend a Zoom meeting. Immediately after taking a seat, the man who you saw in the video, unmasked and wearing a hot pink hoodie, raised his fisted hand to my face asking me for a fist bump.
“Even after ignoring him, the man persisted. I turned to him and politely said ‘Sir please don’t touch me or engage with me. I am not interested.’
“It was clearly not the answer this man wanted because he grew irate while aggressively yelling at me for not accepting his niceties.
“I felt unsafe and moved away from him as I got up and stood against the wall inside this moving train, I began to film the incident on my phone.
“It was about 56-57 seconds long where I was accosted by this man and I had nowhere to go as you can hear from the recording.
“He yells, ‘kiss my ass, suck my dick, while grabbing his genitals. As we approached 42nd Street he yells ‘who would want to touch you…,’ and proceeded to spit on me twice.
“As soon as the train stopped on 42nd Street, I quickly moved away from him. None of the bystanders helped me as I moved to another car.
“As the train began to move again, I distinctly remembered feeling violated and angry I was shocked,” said Lee.
“I knew this had to be reported. I exited the train on 59th Street, remembering that there is a police precinct located inside that station. As I sat down to write my personal statement, the lieutenant on duty, Dewan, pursued, asked me if the man hurled an Asian slur?
“The man had in fact called me a carrier, a clear reference to the COVID pandemic and the recent rise of AAPI hate.
“Dewan conducted a curbside trial and immediately dismissed my case as a hate crime because the perpetrator did not use an Asian slur.
“Not knowing how the precinct was going to officially label my case, I continued to write my statement and was instructed to call within a week to retrieve my number so that I could follow up two weeks after the incident I discovered the precinct to label my case harassment rather than hate crime.
“As I called and had the report read to me over the phone, I also discovered that the precinct failed to include that I was called a carrier even though I included it in my initial statement, and had video footage proving as much.
By mid-October I spoke to Dewan over the phone and he refused to amend my case, continuously stating I was not a hate crime victim because the perpetrator did not call me Asian carrier.
“I was able to reach Deputy Inspector of New York State Crime unit, Jessica Corey, Oct. 27, hoping for a proper investigation. Corey reached out to me that evening stating I was not a hate crime victim.
“In December I was notified by a civilian review panel that my case was labeled a hate crime, that was when I went public with my story with Stefan Kim of ABC 7 News and thanks to his reporting, Mayor Eric Adams heard about my case and reassigned Jessica Corey from New York State Crime unit.
“Going public with my story was not about finding the perpetrator Michael Aldridge. I wanted to go public with my story to bring attention to the improper mishandling of cases within the AAPI community.
“I hope that by bringing attention to the way law enforcement labels and conducts possible hate crime investigations, we can bring real changes to the system, ensuring not only the safety of every member of the AAPI community, but of others as well.
“That is why the introduction of the SB434 bill by Senator Dave Min is a much-needed part of the solution, along with the SB 1161 bill which was passed in September 2022. We cannot work together on solutions to a problem unless we gather accurate information identify where issues may be, address them and validate the voices of those impacted. This is about safety for all,” said Lee.
Peter Kerre from Safe Walks NYC
“We formed Safe Walks in January 2021, after a spike in attacks against women, which are extremely horrific. There seem to be no public interest. It wasn’t being amplified by the media that much, and law enforcement weren’t even addressing it at all,” said Peter Kerre, founder of Safe Walks NYC.
“One day, I just jumped on my bike, rode to the subway station and just offered to be a presence for anyone who felt unsafe, and what instantly caught my attention is that despite four brutal attacks at that subway station, there was no police presence.
“There wasn’t even a single sign warning ladies or warning the nearby community that the area was unsafe and the area was still unlit.
“There was almost no interest at all in resolving this and having been also a protest leader within the Black Lives Matter movement with a significant following, sharing what I was doing to the Greater Community enabled our activities to go viral pretty fast and we had we soon had several residents from around New York City volunteering to be a presence for those who felt unsafe and vulnerable.
“We made this purposely as simple as possible so I have to try and inspire more people to join and be part of a similar effort.
“We immediately noticed as soon as we hit the streets, we were dealing with a massive intersection of different crises at the same time — mental health crisis, socio-economic crisis due to unemployment and financial difficulties, racial crisis due to the hate mainly targeted towards the AAPI community, and the elephant in the room, a breakdown and trust between law enforcement and community,” Kerre.
