METRO Says Assaults Are Down Where It Put More Officers: 38 Percent on the Red Line, About 10 Percent on Buses
METRO Police Chief Ban Tien says the agency's increased-presence push - motorcycle officers at hotspots, command staff riding routes - has cut assaults sharply on rail and modestly on buses. Some riders told KPRC they are still waiting to see those officers on their own routes.
Houston METRO says its decision to put more officers where crime concentrates is producing measurable results. METRO Police Chief Ban Tien told KPRC 2 that assaults on the Red Line have dropped 38 percent since the increased-presence initiative began, and that assaults on buses fell about 10 percent in the first two months of implementation.
The strategy, as Tien described it, is concentration rather than headcount: METRO has added motorcycle officers at hotspots and has executive command staff ride routes to hear directly from bus operators and passengers. Tien said staffing has not grown much despite active recruiting - the gains have come from deployment, not hiring - and he credited the agency's mobile command presence with already helping stop a potential knife attack downtown.
Riders are not all persuaded yet. KPRC spoke with passengers who said they still have concerns about safety; one rider said she has seen METRO officers on her route only once and wants to see them more often, particularly on the bus - the mode where the reported improvement, at about 10 percent, is also the smaller of the two.
The numbers are METRO's own, reported by its police chief, and they cover the initiative's first months. Whether the Red Line's steeper drop holds as the deployment continues - and whether bus riders begin to feel the difference the statistics describe - is the test the agency has set for itself in public.
