Striking SEPTA police worry agency’s contingency plan won’t keep commuters safe

Nearly two dozen transit police officers gathered in a corner of Jefferson Station early Thursday morning to picket, taking selfies in their sandwich-board signs that read “On strike: SEPTA Transit Police” before heading to the agency’s Market Street headquarters.

Once there, the officers were greeted by horn honks in solidarity, including from the driver of a pro-76Place arena billboard truck sponsored by Local 158, Philadelphia’s carpenter union.

The officers walked off the job about 7 p.m. Wednesday on the strength of a two-thirds vote of members of the Fraternal Order of Transit Police Lodge 109 to strike rather than accept SEPTA’s latest contract offer.

They’ve been working without an agreement since March 31 and bargaining with SEPTA, with the aid of a state mediator, for almost nine months. The two sides were scheduled to return to talks at 2 p.m. Thursday.

“We’ve been stuck in the same place for a while, but it will be good that we’re back talking,” SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch said.

Leaders of the union — which represents the 170 officers who patrol SEPTA stations, buses, trains and trolleys — said that sole point of conflict is the length of the proposed contract, which differs from deals SEPTA has negotiated with its other unions.

» READ MORE: SEPTA police are on strike. Here’s what you need to know for your commute.

The transit police union and SEPTA are in agreement on employee benefits and wages, they said: a 13% pay increase and a $3,000 signing bonus, on par with a recent deal struck between the transit agency and its largest union, Transport Workers Union Local 234.

Transit police, however, want those wages spread over a three-year contract, which Lodge 109 vice president Troy Parham said has been the standard duration of deals SEPTA has offered its other unions. He said the offer to his members was for a 43-month term, or a little over 3½ years.

“SEPTA said, ‘That’s what we can do based on our financial constraints.’ Well, I’m not paid well enough to care about SEPTA’s financial problems,” said Parham, who has been an officer with the transit agency for 27 years (or five strikes).

Parham said the union hired an economist to calculate how much a 36-month contract would inflate the transit agency’s budget. It metered out 0.04%.

SEPTA has struggled to bounce back after the COVID-19 pandemic, with ridership less than 65% of what it was it was in 2019 as commuters lament issues with scheduling, service, and the overall state of the transit network. The agency faces a $240 million annual deficit beginning next year as the last cache of federal pandemic aid is spent

For the police, the issue boils down to respect.

“What we do is special. We get called to jobs that no one else handles … We make the machine work,” Parham said. “To try to handle us like we’re less than bus operators and conductors is unfair.”

Though SEPTA is replacing striking transit officers with a mix of nonunionized supervisors, Philadelphia Police Department officers, and officers from local university forces, commuters at Jefferson Station had a mixed review of the police presence Thursday morning.

Maryellen Mitchell, a nurse at Penn Medicine, commutes over an hour four times a week from Ambler to 40th Street for work. Mitchell was unaware that transit police were on strike but said she saw no police officers during her connection at Jefferson Station.

”I feel unsafe and upset,” said Mitchell, who would consider taking Uber both ways if it wasn’t prohibitively expensive.

On Wednesday, Mitchell said, she saw a man passed out in Jefferson Station with a needle stuck in his arm. When Mitchell asked a security worker to help, she recalled one “shrugging. He said that SEPTA police are supposed to take care of that.”

Mitchell believes the transit police strike is going to further undermine confidence in SEPTA, which is already struggling to return ridership to pre-pandemic levels. Quality of life violations — which include things like public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and smoking — rose more than 34% between 2019 and 2022, leading some commuters to avoid taking the train altogether.

» READ MORE: SEPTA grapples with safety issues amid low ridership

“We deal with so much public drug use on the trains,” Mitchell said. “It’s either people using in front of me or blowing weed in my face or needles on the floor.”

Other riders said they didn’t notice much of a difference or know there was a strike.

Brendan Clay, who commutes five days a week from Jefferson to Conshohocken for work, was aware that SEPTA transit police had authorized a strike but didn’t know that one had began as of Wednesday night. He didn’t notice much of difference this morning.

”Honestly, I’ve never had any encounters on SEPTA that I felt could’ve been resolved with intervention,” Clay said. “But I’m also 6′3′ and close to 300 pounds, so that probably helps.”

Striking transit officers don’t believe that SEPTA’s hodgepodge contingency plan will be able to successfully cover the transit network.

“We’re slammed everyday. I don’t know how they’re going to do it,” said Brian Zenszier, a 17-year SEPTA force veteran whose been through three strikes. “[Other police forces] have their own problems.”

For its part, the PPD has a staffing shortage of approximately 1,300 officers, causing 911 response times to slow as the city works to stem the issue by attempting to relax reading and fitness requirements for the jobs.

» READ MORE: Philly police officials want to ease reading and fitness requirements for recruits after mass officer exodus

Besides, some transit cops said, the work they do can be more an intense than walking a beat or responding to radio calls.

Roemel Martin has been a SEPTA officer for 20 years and through three strikes. In his experience, SEPTA’s transit police are made to “work with limited resources” while dealing with a larger number of people experiencing homelessness than most standard police officers.

Many of the people have mental health issues, Roemel said, or are in the throes of addiction, which takes a delicate hand.

Within the past four months, Martin and Parham said, transit police arrested three murder suspects and three other attempted murder suspects.

“It’s a tough time to go on strike,” Martin said. “We just want to get back to our jobs keeping Philadelphia safe.”