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Bombings Set Off Red Line Worries

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Times Staff Writers

At the edge of the Hollywood and Highland station platform on the Red Line, gates to catwalks paralleling the system’s tunnels carry cautionary signs: “Warning Keep Out.”

But ever since the Red Line opened more than a decade ago, some have ignored the warning.

For the record:

12:00 a.m. July 24, 2005 For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday July 24, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 32 words Type of Material: Correction
L.A. subway security -- An article in Saturday’s California section on efforts to upgrade security in L.A.’s subway system misidentified Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Parker of the Transit Services Bureau as Mark Parker.

Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Diamond remembers a woman with Alzheimer’s who walked into the tunnel after her husband boarded the subway and she was left behind. A man allegedly on drugs played cat and mouse with deputies, walking from one station to another in the tunnel. Diamond has also heard from other deputies of transients going into the tunnels.

Following the London terrorist bombings and two incidents on the Red Line, the Sheriff’s Department, which provides security for the regional transportation system, has stepped up patrols along the platforms to prevent people from venturing into the tunnels.

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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is also installing alarms on the gates to tunnel catwalks, officials said.

“We don’t want to catch [intruders] in the tunnel. We want to catch them before they get to the tunnel,” said John Catoe, deputy chief executive of the MTA.

The transit agency is particularly concerned about subway tunnels because a bomb explosion could cripple the line, and suspicious packages left inside a tunnel could go unnoticed longer than those left at a station, Catoe said.

Improving security in the subway was a major topic of discussion at Friday’s MTA board meeting. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he was concerned because the camera system in the Los Angeles subway is not as sophisticated as London’s video surveillance, which has helped officials investigate the bombings.

Just back from London, Capt. Dan Finkelstein, head of the Sheriff’s Department’s transit security operation, told the MTA’s Executive Management Committee that cameras in the London subways have the ability to zoom in on a suspicious package or individual. By contrast, the cameras on the Red Line cannot pan, tilt or zoom.

“Los Angeles has got some work to do to convince the federal government that we need resources to have the best state-of-the-art equipment possible,” Villaraigosa said in an interview after the meeting.

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The Red Line, about 17 miles long, is the most widely traveled of the MTA’s four light-rail and subway lines, logging about 117,000 weekday boardings. Still, it has far fewer commuters than rail lines on the East Coast.

Despite increased security measures, passengers traveling the Red Line on Friday said that they believed if someone really wanted to get into a tunnel, little could deter them.

Malik Faroah, 46, who has ridden the Red Line for 11 years, said that as a kid in New York he played in the subway with friends. Faroah said he did not believe it would be difficult to get into the subway tunnel by jumping onto the track and going around gates.

“People are going to go where they need to go,” Faroah said. In New York, he said, the homeless could be found sleeping in abandoned tunnels or stations.

However, “those spaces that they show in movies with big caverns and empty tunnels that people can dwell in -- we don’t have anything like that,” said Lt. Mark Parker of the sheriff’s Transit Services Bureau. “It’s a catwalk mostly.... All segments of our tunnels are being used.”

Deputies respond to about 10 incidents a year when individuals enter Red Line tunnels. Two incidents immediately following the July 7 London bombings put officials on increased alert.

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A day after the bombings, passengers and closed-circuit television operators observed a man entering the subway tunnel at the Red Line’s Hollywood and Highland station at 11 p.m., sheriff’s and MTA officials said. Deputies evacuated the station, which runs under the new Kodak Theatre, and service was halted for about an hour and a half. They detained a man said to be a photographer. The Sheriff’s Department and MTA plan to ask the district attorney’s office to file criminal charges against him, Parker said.

About 1 p.m. on July 9, a train operator and a passenger saw another person entering the subway tunnel at the Red Line’s Vermont and Sunset station, officials said.

The station was evacuated and closed for about four hours, and passengers were bused to another station.

Sheriff’s deputies detained the individual, described as a transvestite, who was taken into custody for mental observation. The sheriff’s bomb squad was called out to investigate the individual’s purse, which was left in the tunnel and had wires protruding from it, but it was empty.

Byron England, who manages the MTA’s surveillance-monitoring headquarters, which oversees about 400 cameras along all four lines, said his staff was on high alert “on everything,” including individuals attempting to enter tunnels and suspicious packages.

Sheriff’s spokesman Parker said that the sheriff and MTA have been asking patrons to be watchful, too.

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“The tunnels have to open for the trains to pass through. You can’t have a gate,” Parker said. “It’s the same issue globally.”

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