![]() ![]() Her mind seemed to reel as she heard how he lay bleeding on the same platform Boyd uses to catch her train. “Although MARTA Police can’t be everywhere, the officers are vigilant about looking out for suspicious behavior throughout the system and rely on MARTA customers to be our eyes and ears,” agency spokeswoman Alisa Jackson said.īut all the efforts to keep the system safe don’t mean as much if customers don’t actually feel secure.Īlicia Boyd, an accountant who works for CNN, stood in the breeze at the Avondale station recently listening to the story of Azuana’s stabbing. Customers can discreetly contact MARTA police with the app, or with emergency phones placed around MARTA locations. MARTA boasts more than 10,000 surveillance cameras (several of which reportedly captured the train stabbing) and the free See & Say smart phone app. The system's increase in homicides appears comparable to similar upticks in the metro area, such as in the city of Atlanta and DeKalb County. MARTA’s overall crime was down 13 percent in 2016 from the previous year. In fiscal 2016 robberies fell to 52, while aggravated assaults rose to 95.Īs is typical for MARTA, most crimes took place among rail riders, while a still-sizable number were classified as relating to buses and parking lots. MARTA’s data shows the system saw 131 violent crimes (homicides, rapes, robberies and assaults) in fiscal 2015, including 61 robberies, 68 aggravated assaults and two rapes. MARTA’s crime numbers include crimes committed onboard their rail cars, buses, and in their stations or parking lots. The systems’ ridership rates are different, but the AJC’s analysis calculated the crime rate with ridership in mind to keep them on a level playing field. MARTA counts crimes by fiscal year, while the others use calendar years. The San Francisco system, whose rider numbers are most comparable to MARTA, had a rate of 44, the AJC found. MARTA’s rate was about 30 per every 100,000 average daily riders the system has, the same as DC’s, while Massachusetts’ was 23. In 2015, for instance, among the four transit systems, only the Massachusetts system had a lower rate of violent crime. ![]() Like MARTA, each is a large system with rail in a major metro area. The systems aren’t required to report all crimes to the Federal Transit Administration, the FTA told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.įor comparison, the newspaper obtained statistics from San Francisco’s Bay Area Transit System, Washington DC’s Metro and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. ![]() These cases were noticed only long enough to play well in one news cycle, then vanished.Ĭomprehensive crime data for America’s transit systems is scarce. He apparently had been killed elsewhere and left in the trunk in the parking lot. Holmes station, where less than a month earlier police found a dead man in the trunk of a car. In addition to the Avondale homicide, a man was shot to death this month while boarding a bus at the College Park station.Īnother man was shot and killed in November at the H.E. But this fiscal year, which ends in June, MARTA police have already worked four. MARTA crime data shows there were no homicides on the system’s property in the last four fiscal years. In spite of the killings, MARTA is still “one of the safest transit systems in the country,” the agency told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. MARTA and its advocates, who’ve worked for years to combat the system’s sometimes sour reputation, assure the killings are “isolated incidents.” In response to questions, MARTA said its police are “vigilant” and have filed murder charges and made arrests in all recent homicides. ![]()
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