Fate of Transit Police May Hang on Blue Line : Law enforcement: RTD board is to decide whether to use its own force or renew a contract with the Sheriff’s Department.

Now that Los Angeles has settled the political questions of where rapid transit trains will run, roughly how much they should cost and who will pay to build them, the Southern California Rapid Transit District faces an equally sticky decision:

Will its transit police be able to police its transit?

The RTD’s Board of Directors is scheduled to decide today whether to let its 192-officer Transit Police Department patrol the Metro Rail Blue Line--and, implicitly, all other mass transit lines being built--or renew its current contract with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

At stake are the security of Blue Line passengers as they pass through some of the county’s toughest gang turf, and the honor of RTD transit police struggling to shed their unprofessional image. Transit police are currently limited to patrolling buses and bus stops.

At issue is how badly the sheriff’s $12-million annual fee helped bloat the Blue Line’s first-year $28-million operating deficit, and the value of safety in luring passengers to what eventually will be the nation’s second-largest rapid transit network.

“With the Blue Line, we established a standard the public deserves,” said Neil Peterson, executive director of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, which pays for all of the buses and trains that the RTD operates. “We can’t downgrade that standard.”

RTD Police Chief Sharon K. Papa rejects the idea that her department means lower standards, because she believes it is uniquely prepared to patrol trains. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said, “to have an agency that specializes in transit policing but doesn’t police the transit system.”

Politicking has been heavy--and heavy handed. Sheriff’s deputies handed pre-addressed post cards to Blue Line riders this summer, inviting them to evaluate law enforcement on the train. The LACTC has commissioned telephone polls and convened focus groups to beef up its support of the Sheriff’s Department. RTD police show up in force, and in uniform, at every board meeting where the issue is discussed.

The RTD board backed the Transit Police two years ago by voting to let them patrol the Blue Line. But the board reversed its decision seven weeks later--embarrassing itself and its officers--after collapsing under intense political pressure from Peterson, Mayor Tom Bradley, and the Board of Supervisors.

Five of the RTD board’s 11 members are appointed by the supervisors, and two more serve at Bradley’s pleasure.

The vote is a bitter memory for some board members, and some said it could shape a decision this year.

Money also will influence the decision. One reason the RTD board agreed to accept sheriff’s deputies on the Blue Line two years ago was because LACTC offered to pay for them--and pay, too, for Transit Police officers that RTD had hired in anticipation of the Blue Line opening. Those officers--RTD says that there were 52 of them, LACTC contends that there were only 28--were used to beef up security on RTD buses and around bus stops.

The cost was high. Originally estimated at just under $10 million a year, protection by the Sheriff’s Department actually cost $12 million--a third of all operating costs. Added to this was $3 million for RTD police who were hired to patrol the Blue Line but waited on buses until the Transit Police could seek again to patrol trains.

LACTC staff, citing their lower tally of officers hired specifically for Blue Line service, has recommended that the commission pay $1.6 million for the extra Transit Police officers.

Regardless of whether the figure is $13.6 million or $15 million, the money devoted to police 27 trains and 22 stations is well above the $12.1 million the RTD has budgeted in 1992 to patrol all 2,500 RTD buses and 19,668 bus stops--as well as maintenance yards, warehouses and the district’s headquarters on Skid Row.

Although it has kept Blue Line crime unexpectedly low--of the few arrests being made, most are of fare-beaters or people with outstanding warrants--the sheer level of security has been criticized as wasteful and elitist.

Earl Clark of the United Transportation Union complained last May in a letter to LACTC that the wildly disproportionate share of money spent protecting the 2% of RTD passengers who ride the Blue Line has created a “second-class citizen status” for RTD bus riders.

Nevertheless, the Sheriff’s Department security bill is projected to climb to $13.1 million in 1992. RTD police contend that they can do the same job, with fewer people, for $8.8 million.

Even with that relative savings, nearly 33%, Transit Police are saddled with a handicapping legacy--their agency’s unprofessional history.

Officers have been photographed embracing beer cans and semi-nude women. Ex-officers accuse the agency of tolerating brutality, responding slowly to crimes, encouraging cronyism, failing to adequately screen recruits and protecting bad cops.

In a lawsuit that was settled out of court, one female supervising sergeant, Sharon Barberic, was accused of roughing up a bus driver during an investigation over whether he was pocketing fare-box cash. In a pending case, a black passenger alleged that Barberic dragged him off a bus and screamed racial epithets at him.

Officer Richard DeMartino, who joined the department in 1989, has been involved in three of the five on-duty shootings in RTD police history. The most recent, in April, 1990, led to the first fatal shooting by a Transit Police officer--as well as a $10-million wrongful death suit against the RTD and an ongoing investigation by the district attorney’s office.

Even Papa’s predecessor as chief, James Burgess, who led the Transit Police since they were formed in 1978, retired three years ago when several RTD board members publicly accused him of improperly fixing parking tickets, hiring his daughter and accepting lodging at a Palm Springs condominium owned by a consulting firm hired by the RTD. Burgess denied any impropriety and no criminal charges were filed.

“People have this perception (of RTD police unprofessionalism) for whatever reason, and it is not an accurate perception,” said Papa, who has been credited with significantly improving the agency’s hiring practices.

Transit police work is “very specialized,” she said, “and the people who choose it as a career are more dedicated to it than an officer who gets it on the luck of the draw”--a sly reference to the Sheriff’s Department.

Papa said that in her brief tenure, turnover has been such that she has had the opportunity to personally review and accept about half of her present force. Another 52 officer positions were added to her $12-million budget for the current fiscal year.

Part of the reason for high turnover under Papa is that when she assumed her $87,000-a-year job in January, 1990, she said she was firing, on the average, an officer a month “for misconduct or failing to meet probation standards.”

“It didn’t make me real popular,” she said.

About two dozen other officers became discouraged and quit, she said, when the RTD directors voted last year to hire the Sheriff’s Department to patrol the Blue Line.

Papa is laying plans to turn that decision around, attending public recruiting sessions in confident anticipation not only of winning back the Blue Line, but also capturing the initial contract for the Red Line subway when that security contract is decided next year.

“We’re gearing up for the Red Line,” Papa said, adding that it is not just for the prestige of patrolling the 4.4-mile subway between Union Station and MacArthur Park. As the Blue Line is a step to the Red Line, the Red Line is a step to permanency.

If the Sheriff’s Department is awarded the Blue Line again, the feeling at RTD headquarters is that it is that much easier to give the Red Line to the Los Angeles Police Department. At that point, it would be difficult not to ask whether transit police--as constituted--have outlived their usefulness, even to patrol the buses.

“We’ve got to do something to turn around the public perception” of safety on the buses, said Peterson, of the County Transportation Commission.

To get the Red Line contract, Papa has increased the visibility of Transit Police. Instead of emphasizing undercover operations as they have in the past, the RTD police board buses in uniform to the make their presence known.

“Perception is critical,” Papa said.

Bolstering that perception are figures that Papa said show a 21% drop in violent crimes on buses or near bus stops in the first half of 1991 compared to the same period a year ago.

Such numbers, and Papa’s pep talks, are boosting morale, especially among younger officers.

“The department has gone a long way since Chief Papa’s taken over,” said RTD Officer Mark Weissman, 25.

But is it too little too late?

“They are improving,” said RTD Board member Nikolas Patsaouras, who until recently was the panel’s president. “But I still have to be convinced that they’re ready (for Metro Rail), that they are capable.”