Running Scared? : Transit: The San Diego Trolley’s crime rate is nearly nil, but recent incidents have some people worried.

Around dusk on July 4, the man boarded the trolley and sat down. He carried with him a large satchel, which he later told police contained the makings of a celebration.

At the corner of 12th and Imperial avenues, the trolley exploded with gunfire. The “celebration” came from a 12-gauge shotgun, which, in discharging accidentally, ripped a hole through the satchel and penetrated the wall of the car.

The man was arrested at the 47th Street Station in Southeast San Diego. No one was injured, but the firing of the gun raised a serious concern:

How safe is the San Diego Trolley?

Statistically, the answer is clear. The number of reported crimes occurring on or near the trolley is extremely low. Langley Powell, president and general manager of San Diego Trolley Inc., said the service suffers .25 incidents of crime per 100,000 passengers.

But Powell said figures don’t tell the full story. On any mass transit system, feelings and perceptions are almost as critical as statistics.

Trolley officials are concerned about what appears to be a growing apprehension among riders about the safety of the trolley, in part because it passes through some of the highest-crime neighborhoods of the city.

“I think people are somewhat apprehensive, and that concerns us,” Powell said. “But we’ve provided a level of security that we hope eases that to a certain degree.”

Powell said that, since its inception July 26, 1981, the trolley has hired Heritage Security Services of Loma Portal to police its 16-mile South Line. (The 18 1/2-mile East Line was added in 1989.) Fifteen guards were hired in 1981, and just recently--after the shotgun incident--the 39th was added. They work at random locations throughout the network--on foot, in patrol cars, on the trolley itself, in parking lots and depots--from 4:45 a.m., when the trains roll out, to 1:45 a.m., when they stop.

The operators of the trolley face a much different situation than that in Los Angeles, where 108 county sheriff’s deputies were recently hired to work the new light-rail Blue Line, which follows a 19-mile route from Long Beach to Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Lt. George Saldamando, who heads the street gang unit for the San Diego Police Department, said that any amount of gang activity along San Diego’s East or South line is nothing compared to Los Angeles.

“Los Angeles and San Diego are completely different when it comes to gangs,” Saldamando said. “In L.A., it’s not uncommon to have a dozen gang-related homicides in a weekend. There it’s a tremendous problem, almost uncontrollable. So crime along the Blue Line was a huge concern.”

Despite three recent gang-related shootings near trolley stations in Southeast San Diego, Saldamando said, the service is safe and, at the moment, not at risk because of gang activity in the area.

Peter Tereschuck, vice president in charge of security for San Diego Trolley, said that, although no one from a law enforcement agency has been hired to work for the service, law enforcement officers do assist as advisers and were instrumental in picking Heritage Security Services.

He acknowledged that, when the trolley opened, “security was not the concern it now represents.” The growth of the system--and the growth of the city and county--have made it a higher priority.

“The growth has been phenomenal,” Tereschuck said. “We’ve gone from a 15.9-mile system to a 35-mile system. We’ve gone from seven or eight park-and-ride centers to twice that many. We first parked 1,000 cars a day (in trolley station parking lots). Now we park twice that many. Our passenger load has increased from 12,000 a day to more than 50,000 on a typical weekday.”

Almost a decade after cars began rolling from the Santa Fe depot to San Ysidro, the East Line opened in June of last year. Just recently, the Bayside Line opened, connecting Seaport Village, the Gaslamp Quarter and the San Diego Convention Center to C Street.

Despite the low crime figures, do people feel safe on the trolley?

Tereschuck said the “question of perception is difficult to answer.” He said much of the mail he gets is from people who marvel at the system’s security, while others complain heatedly about having had their cars stolen.

“Perception is most affected by what’s happened to you,” Tereschuck said.

Trolley station parking lots report about a dozen stolen cars a month. But Tereschuck noted that “one out of every 42 people in the county can expect to have their car stolen during the time they live here. Compared to that, I’d say our stats are great. But, even so, I want perception to be consistent with the record. That’s what we’re striving for.”

Although San Diego is no match for Los Angeles in gangs, Tereschuck said they are a concern.

On a wall near the trolley station at 54th Street and Imperial Avenue, large red graffiti visible from passing cars reads “Crips!”

Powell noted one recent incident in which a trolley car was almost strafed by gunfire during a shoot-out between rival gang members near the 47th Street Station.

In terms of graffiti, slashed seats and broken windows--the bane of mass transit--Powell said the trolley’s policy is to remove or fix such problems immediately. If a cut seat or broken window can’t be replaced at once, or graffiti removed before it spreads like a virus, the car is put out of service immediately. He calls the ploy “deliberately psychological” and says it works.

Judy Leitner, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, the agency that oversees the trolley, said there are more complaints about security during non-daylight-saving time months, when it gets darker earlier.

Powell said particular stops are more trouble than others. He named 12th Avenue and C Street near City College as among the worst; 47th Street is another.

Near City College, women students have reported being harassed by vagrants, both at the station and on the cars. Police say that drug dealing, especially of crack, is a problem at 12th and C.

Controversy has cast a shadow on the 47th Street station since the East Line started in ’89. Powell said the district is considering a redesign of the station.

“The tracks are up high in comparison to the street,” he said. “You have to climb this dark flight of stairs, and it makes people nervous.”

Powell said the trolley’s most persistent crimes are graffiti, cut seats, broken windows and stolen automobiles. Tereschuck calls the incident of “a man on board with a gun” the most serious the trolley has faced.

Tereschuck said that crimes committed in neighborhoods near the trolley are sometimes wrongly perceived as occurring on the trolley. He said a recent stabbing victim trudged from 25th and Imperial--where the crime occurred--to the tracks at 25th and Commercial, where his body was discovered by police.

“The crime had nothing to do with the trolley, but it was perceived that way,” Tereschuck said.

One of the daughters of James Oliver Huberty, the gunman who killed 21 people in a San Ysidro McDonald’s restaurant in 1984, was once quoted as saying that her father enjoyed “playing chicken” with the trolley with her on the back of his motorcycle.

Powell said games of chicken are not uncommon. He said a sailor died near the L Street Station in Chula Vista in 1984 in what officials have since labeled a suicide.

Meanwhile, many riders interviewed by The Times expressed concern about security on the trolley.

At 11:03 on a recent weeknight, Michael Byers boarded in La Mesa. Byers, a 20-year-old salesman, takes the East Line several times a week from his home near Euclid Avenue to Grossmont Center, where he works.

Byers said he’s never experienced “real danger” on the trolley, “but a lot of weird things happen all the time.”

Recently, Byers was sitting across from a man who had a sweater draped over three walnut shells. When he and the stranger made eye contact, Byers said, the man swung the sweater over his shoulder, like a magician pulling back a cape to reveal a dove.

“Guess which one the dollar bill is under,” the man demanded.

Byers guessed--wrong.

“Guess again,” the man said.

Wrong again.

“OK,” the man said, “let’s play double or nothing for $25. Let’s see your $25 first.”

At that point, Byers got up and moved to another seat.

Byers and a companion, Amos Johnson, 26, said fights often break out on board.

“One night, there was this really vicious one between three security officers and two other guys,” Byers said. “I knew the guys had to be on something, because the way they went after these security guards was just insane. Here are these guards with guns and nightsticks and these idiots--who have nothing but their hands to work with--are going after these guys with everything they’ve got.”

“A lot of people who get on are in their own little world,” Johnson said.

Many riders complained that “drunks and crazies” are, by far, the most annoying nuisances.

On the South Line on a recent afternoon, a well-dressed man sat in a corner, looking out the window, talking only to himself.

Another man tried, in vain, to engage anyone he could in conversation--but only about horror movies, the bloodier and scarier the better. He announced, in a voice that seemed to rattle the windows, that Freddy Krueger should be the next President.

A third man entered, tattooed from head to bare feet. Everyone tried to avoid looking at his face.

Mike and Judy Noe may have summed up best what riding the trolley is like, almost 10 years down the line. The Noes, an East County couple, took the East Line the other night from the El Cajon Station to the Civic Center depot to see a play at Horton Plaza.

The Noes looked out of place at near the midnight hour. They were quiet, well-dressed and circumspect.

They said they ride the trolley whenever they venture downtown for a play or dinner, which is often.

And they’ve never experienced a problem. They consider the trolley impeccably safe.

“It’s sometimes an education to listen to the language around here,” Judy Noe said, “but we’ve never been confronted by anything unpleasant. We love it. As to whether we always will--who can say? No one call tell about the future.”