2nd Veteran RTD Employee Arrested in Widening Probe of Thefts of Bus Parts

A Southern California Rapid Transit District maintenance supervisor was arrested Friday on suspicion of stealing spare bus parts from the transit agency and providing them to a charter bus operator. He was the second veteran RTD employee arrested in connection with the continuing investigation.

RTD Assistant Police Chief Harry Budds said maintenance supervisor Franklin C. Jack, 46, a 15-year RTD employee, was taken into custody at his Cerritos home and has been suspended from work without pay. Jack later was released on $30,000 bail.

Last week, RTD bus driver Vernon Glenn Holloway, 45, owner of a one-bus charter service called Holloway Trails, was arrested on charges that he had $1,400 worth of stolen RTD parts on his 42-passenger bus, including an air-conditioner compressor and fan assembly.

The bus was confiscated and taken to an RTD storage yard. Budds said investigators obtained a warrant to search Holloway’s bus and began dismantling it Friday, seeking more missing RTD spare parts.

Probe Continuing

Budds said evidence against Jack indicated that “he stole parts belonging to the RTD and supplied them to individuals who placed them on Holloway’s bus. This investigation obviously is still in progress and could include other suspects.” Budds declined to name others who might be involved.

Both Holloway and Jack worked at the RTD’s Glendale division, and Budds said Jack was suspected of taking the parts from the division’s storehouses.

The transit agency uses a sophisticated computer system to keep track of more than $20 million in parts for its 2,771 buses. The system is supposed to trace a part from the time it is purchased until it is installed on a bus, but Budds said that as yet district officials have not determined where the parts initially recovered from Holloway’s bus were supposed to be.