Inside SEPTA’s surge of violent crime after man arrested for alleged stabbing

Police arrested a suspect in the stabbing of a man in the neck on a SEPTA Market-Frankford Line train Wednesday night, officials said, the latest incident in a recent surge of violent crime along Philadelphia’s public transportation system.

Transit Police apprehended the suspect later Wednesday night, a SEPTA spokesperson said. SEPTA did not identify the man or say what charges he’d be facing.

Around 9:50 p.m. Wednesday, police found the victim at Second and Market Streets and were told by a witness the man had exited the train at the 2nd Street Station in Old City.

Police said the man was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. As of Thursday, the victim was in stable condition, the spokesperson said.

The two men were involved in an altercation before the stabbing, though it is unclear what sparked the fight, a SEPTA spokesperson said. Police said the suspect reportedly exited the train at the Spring Garden Station.

Reported crime on SEPTA’s network has historically paled in comparison to incidents on the city streets around its stations. But as ridership sank during the pandemic, antisocial behavior surged on transit. Quality-of-life infractions on SEPTA rose from 5,405 citations to 7,180 between January 2019 through 2022, particularly for offenses like smoking, public urination, and littering.

Although homicides and robberies declined during this period, other violent crime increased — aggravated assaults rose from 68 incidents in 2020 to 96 last year, according to SEPTA’s crime statistics. Meanwhile, transit officer staffing thinned and arrests sank dramatically.

But early 2023 saw reports of robberies more than double, while a string of high-profile shootings and other hair-raising incidents grabbed public attention.

In May, a 37-year-old man was stabbed while waiting for a train on the eastbound platform of the Tioga station of the Market-Frankford El, Philadelphia police said.

And earlier this month, a man shot at the driver’s side window of a SEPTA Route 57 bus during the morning commute. Philadelphia police said no one was injured.

SEPTA police data count four homicides on the network through the first six months of this year. For comparison, transit police logged six homicides from January 2020 through the end of last year.

Still, Andrew Busch, a spokesperson for SEPTA, argued that despite these incidents, overall public safety was improving.

He pointed to a 17% decrease in reported criminal incidents in the most recent quarter and a 57% decrease in robberies.

A combination of warmer weather and increased enforcement had also led to a 20% reduction in nuisance complaints from riders, he said.

SEPTA has tried to improve safety and quality-of-life issues on its system with a two-part strategy that mixes social work and public safety, with more visible police patrols.

In spring 2021, the transit agency launched a project called SCOPE to deal with a rise in drug use, crime, and the number of unhoused people sheltering in stations. SCOPE sends out teams of outreach specialists to offer social services.

And earlier in the year, transit police officers were shifted from other beats to patrol trains. A new class of 21 recruits were sworn in after graduating from the police academy last month.

SEPTA has also been piloting the use of ZeroEyes, an artificial-intelligence gun-detection video analytics program developed by former Navy Seals, along the Market-Frankford and Broad Street Lines, Busch said.

The program layers its software over SEPTA’s existing security cameras and the artificial intelligence is supposed to identify guns and alert local law enforcement within three to five seconds of detection, a spokesperson said. Former military and law enforcement specialists monitor and verify every detection from ZeroEyes’ operations center.

The technology is only at a limited number of locations along SEPTA’s system and only on the live feed from select station cameras, said Busch.