‘WE LOST CONTROL OF THE TRAIN CARS’

With ridership down and antisocial behavior up, SEPTA is grappling with how to make Philly transit feel safer.

The Market-Frankford Line has its own incense: a combination of cigarette, weed, or K2 smoke. People in the throes of opioid addiction are sometimes frozen in a forward lean in train cars and on platforms. People experiencing homelessness might use a couple of seats or a station to seek rest away from the cold and the heat.

Recent high-profile shootings in and around SEPTA stations in Philadelphia reflect an alarming increase in violence following 2022, when crime on the transit system was trending down. In May, two teens were killed on SEPTA in separate shootings.

However, the types of crime passengers are most likely to encounter on SEPTA are smoking, turnstile-jumping, public urination, and other unruly acts. SEPTA is struggling to manage the incidents.

These are not violent crimes but antisocial behaviors that make many people feel unsafe on the subway and El lines, according to interviews with multiple riders. Some avoid the trains, a potential catastrophe for a transit agency that must grow ridership to financially survive.

“It’s filthier than I’ve ever seen it. More dangerous than I’ve ever seen it,” said David Corliss Jr., 40, as he waited for an El train at 34th Street Station on a recent afternoon. He said his family worries about his safety when he rides public transit.

To address the problems, Transit Police Chief Charles Lawson has adjusted “static” patrol assignments to put more officers on trains. “Large portions of the system went without seeing a police officer ever. To be quite frank about it, we lost control of the train cars,” he said.

Beginning in February, officers were moved from beats in stations to special units that walk through trains on the Broad Street Line and El — with up to 60 deployed during peak times, Lawson said.

Arrests overall by the department have plummeted by 85% since 2019, while the ranks of the 230-person department have thinned by about 13%. Transit Police made 195 arrests last year.

Meanwhile, quality-of-life infractions on SEPTA rose from 5,405 citations to 7,180 between January 2019 through 2022, according to Transit Police data obtained by The Inquirer. Certain infractions, like citations for smoking or public urination, rose by more than 200%.

That increase came after SEPTA downgraded the penalty for the most minor offenses, moving from a $300 criminal court citation to a civil “administrative enforcement notice” that carries a $25 fine. Although these fines are rarely collected, SEPTA has sought to ban more than 1,000 repeat offenders from riding the system.

Philadelphia and other North American cities have been struggling to manage tensions between riders and what they say is an increasing number of people using public transit as a shelter of last resort, whether they are unhoused, addicted to drugs, or have mental illness.

Some cities, notably New York, have responded to violence and quality-of-life problems on their subways by adding more police, a tactic endorsed by Cherelle Parker, who is likely to be Philadelphia’s next mayor.

SEPTA has pursued 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.

• Three months ago, some Transit Police officers were shifted from other beats to patrol trains — and a new class of 21 recruits is set to graduate from the police academy on June 9. The administrative enforcement system for low-level offenses remains in effect, though bureaucratic tension between SEPTA and the District Attorney’s Office stalled the plan to divert the most persistent offenders into court-ordered treatment for drug addiction and mental illness.

The stakes for SEPTA couldn’t be higher. Ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels, and SEPTA needs those passengers back, officials say. Federal pandemic aid will run out by April 2024, and the agency depends on rider fares to make enough money to operate.

It’s also intensely political. Vocal critics bash SEPTA for coddling people instead of responding with stern law enforcement. Those critics include members of City Council who’ve pointedly told transit agency executives to clean up the system and make it safer. Recently, state Senate Republicans passed a bill to take enforcement of crimes on SEPTA away from District Attorney Larry Krasner, require appointment of a special state prosecutor — and make Philadelphia pay the costs.

“It shouldn’t be just on the transit systems,” said Liz Hersh, director of homeless services for the city of Philadelphia. “They’re at the leading edge of some of the more pressing social problems we have … that are way bigger than any of us.”

Focusing on the repeat violators

Before 2019, if riders were caught behaving badly, SEPTA Transit Police would issue $300 citations that required an appearance in Municipal Court.

But former Transit Police Chief Thomas J. Nestel said the department analyzed data in 2017 and 2018 and concluded that the process accomplished little at great cost.

He said about 80% of those charged failed to show up in court. Judges often would convict people in absentia, saddling them with debt for the fines and court costs, which increased if they did not pay and could lead to a warrant for their arrest. Meanwhile, antisocial behavior on SEPTA kept increasing.

So Nestel and his team designed a new strategy intended to focus on the most serious offenders, offering them social services in place of tougher criminal penalties.

“The cohort of people that you really want to focus on is that repeat violator,” he said.

Under the new plan, officers issue badly behaving riders a $25 quality-of-life citation — a civil “administrative enforcement notice.” After receiving a fourth such notice within 12 months, a person would be banned from the transit system for a year, and Transit Police could then charge them with criminal trespassing.

Police would work with the District Attorney’s Office to get those cases diverted to special courts for offenders who need treatment for mental illness or addiction, conditions Nestel said often contribute to misbehavior on transit.

Here’s what we know about people banned from SEPTA:

• From the 2019 launch of the program to issue civil citations until early this year, 1,094 people were banned from the transit system. Nearly 40% of the bans were issued at Market-Frankford Line stations along Allegheny Avenue or at the 69th Street and Frankford Transportation Centers, where the El terminates.

• Demographic information about offenders was recorded in 853 of the ban cases: 70% identified as Black or African American, with a median age of about 35.

• About 200 of those offenders belong to a “vulnerable community,” a term SEPTA uses to refer to unhoused people, those with mental illness, and people in addiction.

• Even though transit officers wrote more tickets for antisocial behavior, the number of people banned from the system declined — from a peak of 475 in 2020 to 165 individuals banned last year.

SEPTA vs. the DA’s office

While repeat offenders are being caught and banned, the court-diversion part of the program has not been carried out, Transit Police say.

“We were finding that most of our misdemeanor [trespassing] cases were being withdrawn,” Nestel said. “The folks we were putting into the criminal justice system weren’t going to diversionary courts and weren’t getting the help they needed.”

Michael Mellon, a lawyer from the Defenders Association of Philadelphia, attributed that to concern among public defenders that SEPTA was using the ban policy to track and arrest people experiencing homelessness.

“Regardless of what SEPTA claims about the purpose of the [citation] program, in reality it criminalized poverty, homelessness, and mental illness,” Mellon said. “Some of the people they targeted languished in jail because they did not have the means or the traditional support to get released.”

In 2020, the Defenders Association and attorneys from the Homeless Advocacy Project contacted the District Attorney’s Office to express their concerns. Trespassing arrests dwindled soon afterward, Mellon said.

Nestel, who retired as chief of the Transit Police last summer, said he does not recall hearing about the public defenders’ concerns. He noted he consulted with officials at the District Attorney’s Office and the Homeless Advocacy Project as he was designing the program in 2017 and 2018.

He said Krasner’s team was supportive of the citation program, including diversion.

But in all likelihood, Nestel said, assistant district attorneys, with huge caseloads that included murder, shootings, assaults, did not prioritize moving the trespassing charges from regular court dockets to mental-health and addiction courts.

Courts also ground to a standstill for extended periods during pandemic shutdowns and that was disruptive, said Lawson, the current chief. There is still a backlog of cases of all kinds, he said.

Krasner and the District Attorney’s Office declined to answer questions about their handling of trespassing cases. When asked whether prosecutors have a role in making SEPTA safer, Krasner said through a spokesperson: ”I will continue to urge our partners in state and local government to make sure systems of care are in place to meet people’s needs.”

SCOPE’s ‘small victories’

Not all crimes and disturbances are the result of vulnerable populations riding SEPTA, but transit officials recognize that they need to do something to help. SCOPE, the transit agency’s new program, dispatches 50 certified peer-to-peer outreach specialists in pairs to seven “hot spots” along the El to offer social services, food, and clothing — without police officers. The specialists also gently encourage people camping in stations to leave.

From January through March this year, 21% of 12,899 “engagements” between SCOPE teams and people in need resulted in referrals to services such as mental health treatment, drug and alcohol treatment, or shelters, SEPTA figures show.

About 99% of unhoused people the teams talk with don’t want help or act on the referrals right away, said Ken Divers, SEPTA’s director of outreach services. He believes the program is gradually building trust among people who often avoid police.

In 140 cases during the first quarter of the year, people in need accepted help, and SCOPE workers took them directly to shelters or other services. SEPTA has 10 designated beds in city shelters, so there is always room when someone wants to come out from the subways, officials said.

“You’ve got to celebrate the small victories,” said Divers, who began his 29-year career as a bus driver. He said he was homeless for a time in his 20s and has close relatives living without shelter.

“SEPTA gets a bad rap, and I don’t think it’s deserved,” said Hersh, the city’s director of homeless services, who has worked with the authority. “They’ve been willing to lead, to innovate, to take risks, to try things that treat vulnerable people humanely — but I also understand they have a responsibility to run a safe transportation system.”

Programs such as SCOPE are a “good foundation” for addressing quality-of-life issues on SEPTA and helping unhoused people and those in need, said Connor Descheemaker, coalition manager for Transit Forward Philadelphia, an association of nonprofit groups that advocates for improvements in public transit. But more needs to be done, they said.

“When we look at the amount of staffing for SCOPE and other service things in comparison to police, we see how low that funding is,” Descheemaker said. “If we want a proportional improvement in quality of life, then we have to proportionally invest in quality of life.”

‘Not like it used to be’

The social problems plaguing SEPTA and other transit agencies raise hard questions about justice and equity in a nation whose institutions have proved unable or unwilling to spend the vast sums that would be required to make serious progress against housing insecurity, emotional and mental health issues, and substance-abuse disorders.

And they also have exposed fissures about the role of law enforcement at a time when many fault police for being overly aggressive in ways that disproportionately affect communities of color, particularly Black communities.

Some experts in policing, however, say enforcement against minor crimes and antisocial behavior on transit makes sense.

“Without that,” said Dorothy M. Schulz, a former transit police captain for the Metro-North railroad and emerita professor of criminology at John Jay College, ”there’s no fear of consequences.”

“The people who do those things get a sense it’s not important and therefore they have carte blanche to do what they want,” said Schulz, who also is an adjunct fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute think tank.

And unaddressed problems such as fare evasion, smoking, and public urination and defecation in the confined space of rapid transit create an atmosphere of fear, she said. ”The feeling of a person is, ‘Well, no one’s in charge here. I’m vulnerable,’ ” Schulz said.

Ultimately, she said, the challenge for transit agencies is to assuage that anxiety.

Lola Phillips, 65, was riding the El to a doctor’s appointment on a recent afternoon with her husband, Raymond, 67, sitting beside her. She said she feels unsafe and rarely, if ever, rides the subway unaccompanied anymore, though she’s used it since she was a girl.

She doesn’t like to even make eye contact with people who are smoking on the train, much less ask them to stop, for fear that she could be attacked.

“You can’t say nothing,” said Phillips, who added that she is old enough to remember when many, especially older adults, felt free to tell somebody who was being obnoxious to knock it off.

“Things are not like it used to be,” she said.