As the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks loom over the fall of 2011, the MTA has released new print and TV ads in its award-winning security campaign. Still urging those riders who see something to say something, the authority has released a series of new commercials and placards that will appear later this month. The new ads show what the MTA is calling “potential terrorists” leaving bags on subways, buses and commuter rail trains.

“The safety and security of our customers is our top priority,” MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder said in a statement. “We are hardening our infrastructure and conducting enhanced policing in coordination with our regional law enforcement partners. But these ads reinforce the important role our customers will always play in ensuring the safety of transit users throughout the entire MTA system.”

The latest public awareness campaign will cost the MTA $10 million, but the Department of Homeland Security is footing the bill. In return, the MTA granted DHS the license to use its slogan — “If you see something, say something” — in nationwide anti-terrorism ads. The latest spots, which include these print ads, were designed by Korey, Kay & Partners, an ad agency with long-standing business ties to the MTA.

As I was browsing through the upcoming MTA Board committee meeting books this evening, I came across a surprising number. After ejecting 2676 straphangers from the system in March of 2010, police officers removed just 668 folks for misbehaving. That’s a decrease of 75 percent, and at a time when arrests are up a few percentage points, this drop in ejections is surprising.

It is, in fact, so surprising that Erik Ortiz of amNew York wrote an entire article on the topic. Riders speaking to the free daily spoke anecdotally of the atmosphere underground. “It’s a problem late at night. Recently there was a man speaking loud getting close to people. You can tell he was inebriated and that makes you feel unsafe,” one rider said.

Of course, drunk, loud people seem to be the least of our worries. Homeless people inhabit subway cars, and panhandlers are supposed to be removed from the subway system. Ortiz tried to determine the cause of the decrease, but answers weren’t forthcoming. He reports:

While authorities would not speculate why there are fewer people being kicked out of the subways, the transit union yesterday said the loss of station agents is a “critical factor.”

“Passengers in stations without an agent really have nowhere to complain other than the emergency call (boxes) that most people don’t even realize is there,” said Jim Gannon, a spokesman for the Transit Workers Union 100.

The union said the MTA has about 480 fewer agents than a year ago. An MTA spokesman declined to speculate on the ejection numbers. The NYPD was unable to say why officers are booting fewer riders, even as they cuff more crooks. Transit arrests are up, and increased nearly 8 percent from 2009 to 2010.

Gannon’s point seems to be the union’s rote response, but it also doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Even if a station agent placed a call to a police officer — a rare occurrence indeed — it would take more time to find the perp and remove him from the system than is worthwhile. Usually these ejections occur during cops’ routine rounds underground, and the presence of station agents shouldn’t cause a 75 percent year-to-year drop.

Furthermore, recent months suggest a pattern is emerging. As Ortiz reported, “In the first three months of 2011 compared to 2010, the number of riders being booted out of the subways dropped 66 percent, 7,794 to 2,631.” That seems fishy.

So what’s going on here? It seems to me as though the cops are scaling back their quality-of-life enforcement efforts underground. As the article notes, offenses for which one may be ejected include jumping a turnstile, panhandling, drinking or smoking, playing a radio audible to others (hah!) or carrying bulky items that interfere with subway operations. If cops are no longer patrolling for these offenses, ejections will decline.

Now someone just has to figure out why the cops aren’t on the case. After all, we’ve all seen instances undergound of ejectionable offenses, but rarely are people removed from the system. Instead, summons and arrest totals have increased, and the word “quota” somehow winds its way through my mind. After all, no one gets credit for an ejection when a ticket or arrest will do, and as NYPD staffing numbers are reduced, the quality-of-life violations undergound will likely increase.

Over the past few years, the MTA has noticed an uptick in a certain type of crime. I’m not talking about technology thefts but rather groping incidents, and today, the issue earned itself some much-deserved prominent press. In his Monday transit column, Daily News reporter Pete Donohue focused on subway perverts who grope unsuspecting women.

He writes:

On average, there are about 600 reported incidents of riders being groped, flashed, grinded or similarly assaulted in the subway every year, according to the police. But NYPD brass and advocates say that’s just a fraction of the misdemeanor sex crimes taking place on trains. In reality, the number of incidents annually is probably in the thousands, some say.

“Oftentimes when people are being harassed, they’re scared, they’re not thinking, ‘Let me find a police officer,’” said Emily May, an R train rider and co-founder of the anti-harassment advocacy group Hollaback! “They’re thinking, ‘Let me get out of this situation.’”

…The NYPD has some undercover officers on the lookout for perverts, but the size of the subway force has shrunk due to budget cuts, just like the number of aboveground cops. Over the last three years, police have averaged 450 arrests for misdemeanor sex crimes, according to NYPD stats. Many creeps who are busted have been around the seedy subway block before. Approximately 15% have been handcuffed previously for similarly loathsome behavior, a police spokesman said.

In his article, Donohue talks about how few defendants face sexual assault-based charges and how the city needs to “wage an all-out war against these two-legged rodents.” He’s right, and over the years, the MTA has tried, with little success, to fight the tide of groping. The agency unveiled a new PSA campaign — one they currently overhauling — in 2008, but sexual harassment remained the leading quality-of-life subway crime. That behavior should not be tolerated.

Created specifically for the subway environment, the Help Point is designed to be an easily recognizable communications tool for customers who need to either report an emergency or ask for travel directions. Photo by Felix Candelaria for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Once upon a time, back in 2005, a shop called Antenna Design built a prototype for an in-system intercom that would provide an immediately recognizable beacon for emergency communications. Termed Help Point, the intercom system won a Bronze medal at the 2006 IDEA Awards and has been a part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection since 2006. It was also included in an exhibit at MoMA in 2005 entitled SAFE: Design Takes on Risk. For a device that hadn’t yet seen the light of day, it had an impressive pedigree.

Last fall, in an effort to ensure a safer subway system amidst personnel cuts, the MTA announced a Help Point Intercom pilot program. By the end of 2010, two stations would be outfitted with these intercoms in an effort to determine whether or not the design worked and how feasible it would be to bring the blue-light beacons to the system’s remaining 466 stations.

Yesterday, a few months late, the MTA unveiled the pilot. At both 23rd St. and Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall along the Lexington Ave. IRT line, these Help Point Intercoms have gone live. With their blue lights, they are evocative of safety features often highlighted on tours of college campuses, and the MTA has high hopes for the design.

“These Help Points will make our subway system safer and easier to use, expanding access to assistance throughout stations in a way that wasn’t possible before,” MTA Chairman & CEO Jay H. Walder said. “This is just another step in our efforts to bring new technology to customers in ways that make using the transit system better every day.”

These intercoms, a far cry from the ones currently in use that are so easy to ignore and hardly ever work, are designed to be “highly visible and easy to use.” Nine of them are in place at 23rd St., and another ten have been put along the platform at the Brooklyn Bridge stop. As part of the pilot, the MTA is also working to determine whether wireless communications or a hard-wired line will better fit their needs.

In terms of functionality, the new ADA-compliant devices have both an emergency call button and a green information button that will connect straphangers with the station agent on duty. As Transportation Nation’s Jim O’Grady notes in covering what he aptly calls new subway emergency thingies, the audio quality will be digital and much improved over the current intercom system. “The older devices,” he writes, “did not have digital audio, which sometimes made it hard to hear and be heard. They also had an indistinct design that made them blend with their surroundings–few riders knew where they were or what to do with them.”

Transit head Thomas Prendergast highlighted these improvements as well. “These units have a fresh new appearance that will make the Help Points easy to identify. The sound will be crisp, clear and easy to understand which is an important feature especially in the subway environment,” he said. “As designed, the Help Points are major step beyond the Customer Assistance Intercoms now in our stations.”

As the pilot is beginning, the MTA is vague on future plans. The authority says that “the plan calls for the installation of the Help Points in all of the system’s 468 subway stations.” Early estimates put the per-station cost at $300,000, and the MTA would have to purchase 5000 intercoms to place one every 150 feet on station platforms. Total installation costs for the entire system then would reach $139,800,000. Maintenance costs would be substantial as well, and the MTA doesn’t exactly have the cash on hand right now. Can the MTA makes us safer without spending the dollars?

The MTA’s capital security improvements are moving forward slowly, but these key investments are way over budget and four years behind schedule, according to yet another report released today by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The audit — the seventh from DiNapoli in recent years that focuses on the agency’s security efforts — praises the authority for improving the porous system’s safety but worries that there is not enough money to fund 16 necessary projects. Furthermore, DiNapoli notes that the projects which should have wrapped in September 2008 are not due to finish until mid-2012 and that costs on key projects — including the camera system — have more than doubled in the ensuing years.

“The capital security program the MTA has implemented since 9-11 has made New Yorkers more secure,” said DiNapoli said in a statement. “The MTA has made progress, particularly in the last two years. But the mass transit system is still inherently vulnerable. Individual projects in this program are months if not years behind schedule and well over budget, and additional capital improvements are needed. My office will continue to track MTA management of this program.”

DiNapoli’s press release sums up the report (pdf):

The projects in Phase 1 of the MTA’s capital security program target the system’s most vulnerable and heavily used assets, including stations, transit hubs, bridges and tunnels. Each project involves one or more facilities and security improvements to elements such as electronic security and surveillance, fire, life and safety and evacuation enhancements, perimeter protection and structural hardening. This phase, originally scheduled for completion by September 2008, will not be completed until June 2012.

After more than nine years, the MTA has completed 11 of the original 16 security projects as well as elements of the five remaining projects. The MTA has hardened all 14 facilities planned for Phase 1; improved lighting, communication systems, and smoke and fire detection equipment in 15 facilities; installed perimeter protection around four facilities; and despite significant setbacks, the electronic security program.

As of December 2010, the MTA had completed 31 of 38 planned construction tasks and the remaining seven tasks were all in the process of construction, though more than 60 percent of the 38 tasks were behind their established schedules, including 11 that were behind by more than one year (five tasks were more than 30 months late). The cost of Phase 1 (including two facilities that were deferred from Phase 1 to Phase 2) has grown from $591 million to $851 million, an increase of 44 percent.

Ultimately, according to the report, Phase 2 will attempt to fund 33 of the original 57 areas that need security upgrades, but 16 projects will remain only on the drawing board until money becomes available.

As DiNapoli notes, since 2007, he has issued 27 releases on the MTA which include 14 audits and 13 top-line reports. He is still conducting eight more audits and a forensic audit on overtime and another performed in conjunction with the city comptroller’s office. Still, I’m left with the same question I have every time he sends out a release: What’s the point?

The MTA’s troubles with their security improvements and the exponentially increasing costs have drawn newspaper headlines for years. DiNapoli’s report doesn’t highlight ways in which the authority can implement cost-savings measures and fails to mention what they’re doing wrong. Do we really need to expend more taxpayer dollars on something we already know?

As the MTA gears up for another round of board meetings this week after a six-week winter hiatus, the crime numbers are going to take center stage. Already, amNew York’s Theresa Juva has noted an uptick in subway crime, and as this is the first such increase since 2004 and only the second since 1997, subway watchers will try to figure out why.

The pure numbers themselves aren’t too shocking, and subway crime is still near all-time lows. Yet, the slight increase is there. The New York Police Department reported 36 more felony assaults in 2010 over 2009 and 91 more grand larcenies last year over the year before. Percentage-wise, felony assaults were up 23.2 percent, and grand larcenies were up 7.7 percent to 1269.

One of the key drivers behind the increase in grand larcenies, as the police noted in December, is the proliferation of smart phones. The New York Penal Code defines a grand larceny as the theft of “an access device which the person intends to use unlawfully to obtain telephone service.” In non-legalese, then, that means any time a perp robs another of any cell phone — a Droid, a Blackberry, an iPhone, you name it — it’s a grand larceny. As Raymond Diaz, head of the NYPD Transit Bureau chief, said last month, “The snatching of electronic devices seems to be our biggest concern with crime.”

In amNew York, Juva wonders if “the bad old days underground have returned.” While a seemingly natural question, it’s tough to look at these numbers and conclude so. Even as late as 1997, when the subways were far, far safer than they were in 1987, grand larcenies totaled 3463 or nearly three times as many as police recorded in 2010. That year, cops reported 17.04 major felonies per day, but even with the increase last year, the NYPD counted just 5.96 major felonies daily — out of five million weekday riders.

Cops and rider advocates pointed fingers in different directions. A police spokesman told amNew York that “teen-on-teen” crime is to blame for the increase in grand larcenies. After kids get out of school, they seem to like to take each other’s phones. “Deployments are designed to address after-school ridership when most teen on teen crime occurs,” the department said.

Others looked, naturally enough, at the decline of the station agent. “There are less eyes and ears in the system and many more things to take as more gadgets are displayed all over the place,” Transit Riders Council chair Andrew Albert said to Juva.

On the one hand, I can see why Albert wants to blame the decrease in station staffing levels. If someone’s iPod is snatched and no station agent is present, the victim must track down someone to help. By the time he or she reaches street level and can call the cops, the perpetrator is long gone. On the other hand, it sounds that most of these grand larcenies are of the snatch-and-go variety. Someone looking for an easy score grabs a phone out of their victim’s hands and then bolts out of the subway car as the doors close. The victim has no recourse whether a station agent is there or not.

As I wrote in October, I believe the increase in thefts to be a result of our obliviousness. As the subways are drastically safer today than they were 13 or 23 or 33 years ago, New Yorkers are more comfortable riding with luxury. We flash everything from Kindles to iPads to laptops and just assume that subway crime won’t happen to us. Toward the end of the year, grand larceny reports spiked, and that’s when people needed money the most. Cell phones are an easy target, and as long as riders stay aware of their surroundings, those numbers should decline naturally this year.

Random bag searches have been the way of life underground since 2005. (Photo by flickr user Runs With Scissors)

For New Yorkers, random subway bag searches have been a way of life for six years. Now and then, straphangers see a trio of NYPD officers set up shop at an entrance, usually at rush hour when most people would rather just got home. Right now, ten years after 9/11 and what seems like a lifetime since Transit and the police started its own bag searches, Washington’s WMATA is launching its own bag searches, and the riders are not happy.

In many regards, the stories coming out of the District of Columbia mirror those from New York in 2005, but Metro passengers in DC are unhappier than straphangers here ever were. Dr. Gridlock of The Washington Post offers up his take on the bag searches in DC. While New Yorkers hate the MTA, folks in DC loathe the WMATA and have not take kindly to the latest intrusion into their privacy. He criticizes the WMATA board for falling to explore this change in policy, and the rhetoric is strong. It is, he says, “one more indignity” customers who have “taken so much from the transit authority” must withstand.

The WMATA officials of course defended the policy in December on grounds that, hey, New York is doing it. “While there is no specific or credible threat to the system at this time, this inspection program is part of our practice of varying our security posture and adds another type of visible protection on our system,” Richard Sarles, Metro’s interim GM, said.

“[Police Chief Michael] Taborn has ensured that this program will minimize inconvenience to riders. The program is based on similar successful law enforcement programs used routinely on transit systems in the New York, New Jersey and Boston areas. Inspections will be brief and are typically non-intrusive, as police will randomly select bags or packages to check for hazardous materials using ionization technology, as well as K-9 units trained to detect explosive material. Carry on items will generally not be opened and physically inspected, unless the equipment indicates a need for further inspection.”

As with in New York, those who refuse inspection are not permitted entrance into the system, and the riders absolutely hate it. “We’re not Israel, nor should we be. The searches are ineffective,” one said at a recent public forum.

These DC responses remind me of a time nearly six years ago when the MTA implemented a similar procedure. In the wake of the July train bombings in Europe in 2005, the MTA and other area transit authorities began random bag inspections throughout the region. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly felt that “time was right” to begin this security initiative, and taking to the airwaves, Mayor Bloomberg tried to assuage public fears of police misconduct. “I hope that we have established the right balance here, providing the kind of security we need while not being too intrusive and not violating their rights,” he said. “The way we’ve done this is: You can walk away if you don’t want your bag searched; you just can’t get on the subway. So we do it outside the turnstile. And there’s no profiling.”

Calling protecting our subways a “vital national interest,” The Times endorsed the practice, and after the first week, most watching the program cited “an absence of drama.” Still, civil liberties groups were not too happy with the searches, and the NYCLU filed suit in November.

The following year, a three-judge panel in the Second Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the searches. “In light of the thwarted plots to bomb New York City’s subway system, its continued desirability as a target, and the recent bombings of public transportation systems in Madrid, Moscow and London, the risk to public safety is substantial and real,” determined the judges.

Today, the bag searches have become background noise in the subways. At first, cops were inspecting every fifth passenger to enter the system, but these days, it appears far more random than that. I constantly see the police set up shop at West 4th St., but even with a heavy backpack in tow, I’ve never once had to stop for a bag search. Despite Bloomberg’s promises in 2005, I can’t help but think that I don’t look the part enough for the NYPD.

As D.C. grapples with a similar project — a legal challenge seems both brewing and bound to fail — maybe it’s time to reevaluate our city’s own program. Has it made the subways safer? Does it still? The MTA still faces fears of photography at depots where security staffing had to be reduced, and anti-terrorist experts admit that our rail systems remain insecure. There’s no good one way to keep terrorists at bay, and a wide array of local responses seem to be warranted to make sure we’re as safe as possible.

We seem to be stuck with the bag search hand we’ve been dealt. It — and the threat of terrorism — isn’t going away any time soon, and DC’s Metro riders will soon, for better or worse, learn the same lesson. While New Yorkers didn’t put up much of a fight or offer public outcry, though, Washingtonians won’t take their bag searches lying down.