Sheriff to Hire Some MTA Officers

Following a different track than the Los Angeles City Council, the county Board of Supervisors gave swift approval Tuesday to the merger of a portion of the MTA transit police force with the Sheriff’s Department.

As a result of the board’s action, the sheriff will assume responsibility for policing 40% of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s operations, focusing on its rail and bus lines, possibly as early as November. If final details are worked out between the city and the MTA, 60% of the transit police work, including the MTA’s Red Line, would be handled by the Los Angeles Police Department.

“This is a partnership,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Marc Klugman. “We’re very confident we’re going to be able to provide a higher level of service. More officers, more people on the street and more investigative services.”

Daniel Cowden, the MTA’s director of security, said the county is proceeding with the outright merger of transit police into the Sheriff’s Department.

On a 4-1 vote without debate, the supervisors authorized the sheriff to hire 152 additional sworn officers and 33 civilians for transit police duties. The City Council, on the other hand, has taken a more cautious approach. Rather than an outright merger, the council has approved a hybrid plan, which is still being finalized, that would allow the LAPD to keep out MTA officers who failed to meet the LAPD’s employment standards.

The county’s approach is similar to that used by more than three dozen cities that contract with the Sheriff’s Department for police services.

“We are merging their employees into our ranks,” Klugman said. However, about a dozen MTA officers probably will not be offered a position in the Sheriff’s Department as a result of problems uncovered during background checks, he added.

Like new deputies, MTA patrol officers joining the Sheriff’s Department will find themselves in a different line of work: They eventually will be assigned to custody duty in the jails or in court.

The MTA will pay the county $17.3 million the first year to deploy sheriff’s deputies along bus routes outside the city of Los Angeles as well as on Blue Line trains from Los Angeles to Long Beach and the Green Line from Norwalk to Redondo Beach.

Under terms of the agreement being negotiated with the city, the transit agency would pay up to $23.4 million the first year for LAPD officers to patrol bus lines in the city and the Red Line subway.

Unlike the supervisors, City Council members last month refused to proceed with an outright merger of the transit police after 43 MTA officers failed LAPD background checks.

Rather than having to accept all of the officers as would have been required by the City Charter, the council adopted its hybrid approach to allow the LAPD to screen out certain officers.

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Issues that remain unresolved involve the transfer of personnel and benefits.

MTA Deputy Director Linda Bohlinger said the transit agency has agreed to pay salary and benefits through next June to most transit police officers or command staff not hired by the LAPD or Sheriff’s Department.

The MTA’s police cars, radios, equipment and weapons would be divided proportionally between the LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department.

The two agencies are to operate from a central command post at MTA’s headquarters near Union Station.

“We will have a joint command center with command staff operating alongside each other,” Klugman said.

“The regionalization [of transit police services] is something I’m really excited about,” he said. “We won’t be duplicating services and not talking with each other, which is even more damning.”

For the public, Cowden said, the goal is simply “a safer transit system.”