MTA Votes to Use Its Own Security Force for Patrols, Citing Savings

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Wednesday selected its own security force to patrol the region’s transit system instead of a joint squad of Los Angeles police officers and sheriff’s deputies.

Despite an attempt by Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan to delay the decision, the MTA board of directors voted 11-2 to go with its in-house force, citing substantial cost savings for the cash-strapped agency.

Using the Los Angeles Police Department and the county Sheriff’s Department would have cost $20 million more a year than using its own force, an unjustifiable expense for an agency grappling with a projected $126-million operating deficit, officials said.

In the end, Riordan, who had voiced support for the police-sheriff’s bid, sided with the majority after winning approval of an amendment to establish a multi-agency task force to monitor security services on the MTA’s extensive network of bus and rail lines.

“I would hope and expect that this is going to start a process of . . . constant improvement,” he said after the vote, which directors pushed to the top of their meeting agenda so that the mayor and others could attend the funeral of former President Richard Nixon.

Riordan said the task force would foster better collaboration between transit police, the LAPD and sheriff’s deputies, and would reduce duplication of services.

MTA Police Chief Sharon K. Papa said she was pleased with the outcome: “To say we need to work cooperatively with the LAPD and the sheriff’s is what I’ve said all along.”

Her force is likely to jump from 300 officers to about 800 to fulfill its new mandate of patrolling all MTA buses, the Red Line subway, the aboveground Blue Line and the Green Line light-rail service due to open next year.

Currently, transit police oversee everything but the Blue Line, which is patrolled by sheriff’s deputies. However, that contract expires June 30. Papa said negotiations will begin to transfer jurisdiction to her agency.