Man, this is scary …
On MBTA Bus 23 – which winds past storefront churches, pizza shops, and boarded-up buildings – drug dealers push their wares and passengers fight over money, sometimes with knives. Last March, a teenager was fatally shot on the bus.
Now, as someone who lives a pretty sheltered existence, and is not really acquainted with daily violence, I'm trying to get into my head the idea of someone actually getting shot and killed next to me on the bus. Think about it.
Of course, you can't really blame the MBTA for the problem itself: The bus drivers have a job to do, they're not cops, and they're endangered as well. It stands to reason that bad stuff that's happening in the neighborhood is going to show up on the buses and trains, too.
But people just have to be safe on the bus and train. This is one glaring “broken window” in Boston's law enforcement, and it needs to be fixed, pronto. It seems to me there's a need for some serious, concerted cooperation between the cops, the city, and the T. Unfortunately, we know how well that's been going lately. The Miracle is dead, long live the Miracle.
(Yeah, I missed this yesterday, but Adam and Adam were all over it.
I don’t ride regularly, but I use the 23 now and then and have not seen any violence. But I’m usually riding around 9:00pm-ish. The girl in the story is right that some tension could be alleviated if it wasn’t so crowded. Last week I was freezing my butt off at Dudley waiting for the 23 and when the crowded 23 pulled in, I set my mind on getting on that bus as others did I’m sure. We all got on, but I could imagine some difficulty occurring if people waiting out in the cold couldn’t get on.
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p>Most violence I’ve seen on the T, bus and subway, occurs mid afternoon, or 2:00 – 4:00-ish. But as someone pointed out in the UHub thread, it’s probable many of the violent incidents go unreported. Not to mention, the T and Dan Grabauskas lie their faces off, so any stats on violence are probably cooked anyway.
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p>I find the T generally safe and never feel in danger on my rides, but violence does happen and I can understand why people who have witnessed T violence would feel unsafe. The worst incident I saw was in between Shawmut and Ashmont on the Red Line; a group of 6-7 teenagers or perhaps men in their early twenties just kicked the crap out of an older guy in the car next to mine. That’s the worst because nothing can be done in between stations. Once those doors closed, your trapped; you have to ride it out and wait until the T pulls into the station.
One small piece of the puzzle….
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p>The former Boston police chief, Kathleen O’Toole, told me that 2pm to 4pm was a nightmare for them b/c about 3,000 high school students are dismissed at 1.40pm (plus something about BPD shift changes which I don’t recall).
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p>Anyway, there’s a win-win-win opportunity here: have some high schools shift their hours from the current 7.20am to 1.40pm to a 10.00am to 4.00pm schedule.
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p>a) Good for teens. I think a lot would opt in for schools that started later and finished later, bring down tardiness, get more reasonably well rested kids into school.
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p>b) Good for transit and public. Spreads out the flow of teens. Still gets them mostly home before rush hour. Fewer kids on street 2 to 4. And it’s not like most teens will respond by “being on the street from 7am to 9am.” Not cool.
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p>c) Good for teachers. Get to choose the schedule that works best for you. Some teachers would like to arrive at 7, do all their grading and prep, begin teaching at 10 or later, then finish up at 4pm and take less home.
How many MBTA police do we pay for?
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p>When was the last time you saw an MBTA police officer on a bus?
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p>How many MBTA police cruisers do you see, well, cruising around?
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p>There is a lot of waste at the T. But the overwhelming percentage (I’ve seen the number but would need to dig it up) of the MBTA police force that are in cruisers rather than on the T is not just fiscally wasteful, it leaves riders in danger.
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p>I understand the need for some cruisers so that MBTA police can patrol property and speed between stops, but why can’t the T take a few cops out of cars and put them on the #23 and other routes. Remember those photos of Guardian Angels patrolling the orange line last summer? That was disgraceful. We already pay – and pay well – for someone to protect the T.
This will sound snooty, but our babysitter rides that bus every day to and from our home. She hates it. But she has to ride it. I or my wife will now give her a ride as often as we are able. We will pay for a taxi for her because she is too important a person to us, our daughter, and our extended family. But there will be times when she will need to ride that bus.
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p>One solution to the overcrowding I thought of would be to put those long buses on that route (like on the 39 and the Silver Line.) Having driven that route, however, some of the streets are pretty darn tight and those buses might not work there.
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p>But here’s why it’s worth a try: the 23 bus is one of THE transportation lifelines for a major portion of Boston’s non-white community. It goes from Ashmont (Red Line) to Ruggles (Orange Line) and stops at Dudley (Silver Line) and Roxbury Crossing (Orange Line). Since Boston’s early transportation planners apparently didn’t want to include the minority communities (heavily Jewish at the time) in the web of rail service and since Boston’s current leaders don’t want to expand rail service to these areas (which would be prohibitively expensive, I know) and since they also didn’t hold to their pledge to extend the one-seat-to-downtown-Silver-Line-ride deeper into Roxbury and Dorchester, the least that can be done now is to make this route safe. Put a cop on every bus at peak times, like the air marshals we now have. As Charley says, we’re long past the point where any MBTA Police/BPD rivalries should occur.
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p>As Tim Gunn would say, just “Make it Work.”
You need a plainclothes cop on every 10 buses, and you need to charge them with making even minor busts. Kids start getting hassled by the man, and they’ll hassle others elsewhere.