RTC working to curb bus violence in Las Vegas

A 74-year-old man is shoved to his death while riding a public bus in Las Vegas in March 2019.

In December, a military veteran in his 60s is punched in the face by another passenger on a public bus, causing the victim to lose his eye.

And in February, a 74-year-old man is knocked unconscious by an assailant with a skateboard at a downtown Las Vegas bus stop.

These attacks on people using public transit in the Las Vegas Valley are part of a trend of increasing violence on Regional Transportation Commission buses and property. A Las Vegas Review-Journal review of commission records shows that the number of reported assaults rose 27 percent from the end of fiscal 2017 to the end of fiscal 2019.

A total of 493 assaults were reported on buses or at RTC properties, including bus stops and transfer stations, from fiscal 2017, which began July 1, 2016, through fiscal 2019. In about the first half of fiscal 2020, the RTC had 101 reported assaults.

RTC Deputy CEO Francis Julien said the agency knows it has work to do in protecting passengers. He said the commission is investing tens of millions of dollars in technology and additional security personnel to address the problem.

“It obviously causes concern,” Julien said. “One incident on our property or on our vehicle is one too many. It causes grave concern. Throughout the U.S. since 2008, all transit agencies have seen a steady increase as well. So we are not outliers in this situation, unfortunately.”

Riders want more security

Wendie Gaines said she takes the bus daily from downtown Las Vegas to the Centennial Hills area, riding it to her graveyard-shift job, then riding it home early in the morning. She also takes the bus to get to a medical clinic when needed.

She believes that RTC buses need more security officers.

“In the morning, (there are) plenty of officers on the bus, but at nighttime it is kind of sketchy,” Gaines said. “When you get on the bus at nighttime, you don’t know who you are going to get: drunk people, the high people, people that will do drugs on the bus right next to you. So you try to distance yourself from them, but you can’t always get away from them.”

Rider James Knight, 48, also wants more bus security.

“Crazy people,” Knight said. “They just get on the bus and don’t want to pay.”

Rider Glen Wellbaun feels the same way about the need for increased security.

“During the day it’s OK, but when you start going during the evening and late hours, it does get scary,” Wellbaun said. “At the same time, I feel comfortable myself on it.”

He said he’s witnessed violence on a bus.

“I watched a fight where they had to pull off the road,” Wellbaun said. “The RTC people, they had to come up, get these people off. I think if they would have had somebody there, they would have definitely stopped it.”

Acts of violence

Violent attacks on RTC buses are, in fact, relatively rare. In fiscal 2018, for example, 159 assaults were reported on buses and RTC property. That same year, the commission provided 63.7 million rides on a transit system that has seen explosive growth. RTC ridership is up 15 percent in the last decade, although it decreased by 13 percent from fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2020.

Some bus crimes, though, have resulted in serious injuries. They include:

— Serge Fournier, 74, died of his injuries in March 2019 when, authorities say, a woman pushed him off an RTC bus. Cadesha Bishop, then 25, was charged with murder.

— On Feb. 3, an unidentified man punched a 71-year-old man on a bus in the central valley, police said. The crime happened at Charleston Boulevard and Third Street as the victim argued with a man and a woman about a seat on the bus, police said. The victim was left with a brain bleed from the attack.

— On Dec. 13, a military veteran in his 60s was riding a public bus when he was repeatedly punched in the head by another rider, causing the victim to lose his eye. A suspect in the case, Nathaniel Graves, was charged with mayhem, battery resulting in substantial bodily harm and abuse of an older person.

— In March 2017, Rolando Cardenas shot one man and wounded another, prompting a standoff on an RTC bus on the Las Vegas Strip, authorities said. The standoff led the commission to implement technology allowing police to receive livestream camera views from inside every agency bus in real time.

A review of RTC incident logs shows that from fiscal 2017 through fiscal 2019, there were 438 assaults on buses, ranging from drivers being punched in the face to riders spitting on other passengers. Julien said the commission has scrutinized the incidents, finding no identifiable pattern.

“It happens throughout demographics,” Julien said. “It is not located on one specific route. It is basically across the board, and it is not predictable.”

Investing in technology

Julien said the commission has made significant investments to improve security for passengers in the past year.

At the center of those changes is improved technology, with an emphasis on cameras and live surveillance that streams images to the RTC security command center downtown and to Las Vegas police if needed.

The commission has completed camera upgrades in its transfer stations and is upgrading cameras on buses. Every bus has 12 cameras that offer real-time views for RTC security management.

“We have so far this year alone invested $21 million more into security,” Julien said. “We went out for a request for proposal, changed our security contractor, so now we have more officers on the street. The increase for the officer contract is an increase of 33 percent. That just started on July 1 of this year.”

The change in security contractors has translated into 13 more security officers on patrol and five more employees in the RTC security command center. The commission said it has one officer for every six buses.

Body cameras and beacons

Julien said the new security firm, Marksman, has officers wearing body cameras that also provide live feeds to security management.

“Body cams are new,” said Robert Michael Palumbo, RTC safety and security compliance supervisor. “We review footage to make sure officers are interacting with the public in accordance with our policy, giving customer service and acting accordingly. It gives us that extra layer.”

Other new technology also has been installed.

“One of the technologies we have now is each officer is equipped with a beacon, so in the command center we can actually track where all the officers are in real time, redispatch them more easily,” Julien said.

The RTC’s mobile app now has a button that allows passengers to alert dispatch to a problem on the bus. Bus drivers also have an emergency button that alerts dispatchers, and newly installed shields protect bus drivers from assaults.

Julien said the installation of shields has caused the number of assaults on bus drivers to drop dramatically. And security officers carry firearms.

The RTC even removed rock landscaping at its facilities to prevent assaults with rocks.

“If something is thrown, it is dust,” Julien said. “Not a 2-inch rock.”

Coleman Johnson is a former police officer who worked as a security officer on RTC buses from 2014 to 2019. He said the job is challenging, and he believes all bus security officers need more training.

Also making the job difficult is the fact that security officers, although armed with a handgun and a baton, have little authority. If they witness a felony, he said, they are instructed to “handle the situation with as little force as possible.”

“They are doing the job of transit police without the authority,” Johnson said, adding that a security officer “has the same authority as every other citizen on the street.”

RTC spokeswoman Angela Castro said security officers are trained to de-escalate situations, but if necessary, security officers will rely on help from Las Vegas police.

Contact Glenn Puit by email at gpuit@reviewjournal.com. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter.