April 12, 2024
Thom Carroll/for PhillyVoice
SEPTA Transit Police released its first quarterly report of 2024, noting major drops in serious crimes including aggravated assault and robberies. Murders, however, increased slightly.
Since a string of high-profile murder cases aboard SEPTA trains earlier this year, the transit system has battled the perception that its stations are unsafe. But according to its first crime report of 2024, serious crime is down year-over-year.
SEPTA Transit Police recorded a 45% decrease in serious crime — which includes murder, rape, robbery, theft, burglary, aggravated assault and arson — in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the same time period last year. Transit authorities saw the biggest improvements in robbery, which fell from 102 incidents to 34, and aggravated assault, which dipped from 32 to 24. Burglaries also dropped from five to zero, and arson from five to one.
SEPTA attributes the positive trends to better staffing. The transit police force has grown over four consecutive quarters from 196 officers at the end of 2022 to 230 officers at the end of March.
"The main thing is that we have more officers in our system," Andrew Busch, director of media relations for SEPTA, said Friday. "That's helped us with investigations and responses to incidents."
Busch also praised the system's virtual patrol unit, which launched in the last year. Staffed chiefly by part-time, retired law enforcement professionals, the unit tracks incidents in real time through live feeds and dispatches officers when necessary.
Two significant crime categories, however, increased for SEPTA in 2024. Murders rose from one to three, and rape increased from one to two compared with the same quarter in 2023. The killings included a shooting aboard SEPTA's 15th Street Station and a fight that resulted in one man falling onto the tracks at 34th Street.
"In particular the homicides, because we have so relatively few of those, if we have even a couple within a quarter, it's likely gonna show a significant increase," Busch said. "What we have been doing is trying to focus a lot of our efforts on getting illegal guns off the system because even though we're happy to see these overall numbers going in a good direction, we're still seeing a high level of gun-related violence, which is the same as the city's experiencing."
Part of SEPTA's strategy for combatting homicide is focused on a much more innocuous offense: fare evasion. According to Busch, review of video surveillance showed "most of the violent incidents that we have on the system start with somebody who fare evades." Transit police have subsequently increased prevention efforts, which have been aided by the new full-length fare gates recently installed at the 69th Street Transportation Center.
Though the numbers indicate SEPTA is improving in most serious crime categories, its staff is aware that many see the system as unsafe.
"We hear from our customers and we do know that a perception exists," Busch said. "We think the system overall is safe, but certainly we understand the concerns people have."
A more robust police force is only one piece of SEPTA's plan to address this wariness. The transit system is also seeking to improve its perception through transparency and more literal changes to its image.
"We're stepping up efforts at cleaning because we know that there's a correlation between how people feel about being on the train or being at a station and it being clean and well lit," Busch said. "And they can see not just police, but other personnel working in the station. We've even shifted some duties that we normally do overnight to daytime, more regular hours, so people are seeing those a little bit more."
Follow Kristin & PhillyVoice on Twitter: @kristin_hunt
| @thePhillyVoice
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice
Have a news tip? Let us know.
