Following Metro’s release of the latest crime statistics, the following story appeared in the Eagle Rock Patch:

Metro Crime Stats: Gold Line is Among System’s Safest Trains
The unprecedented Metro report is in response to the recent murder on the Red Line.
By David Fonseca

In response to a fatal stabbing that occurred on a Metro Red Line train in August, the transit authority for the first time ever has released detailed crime statistics for its trains and buses.

A post published today on The Source blog shows that, despite the first murder in the system’s 17-year history, “the number of the most serious crimes has gone down and the number of arrests and citations has gone up.”

The Gold Line, which runs from Pasadena to East Los Angeles through Northeast L.A., and which many Eagle Rock residents use to commute, appears to be one of Metro’s safest lines.

From January through August 2011, 4.4 so-called “Part One” crimes (murder, rape, assault, robbery) per million riders were reported on the Gold Line. That’s significantly lower than the 21.1 and 11.0 per million reported on Green and Blue Lines respectively.

Those numbers are slightly higher than the Red and Orange Lines, which reported 3.7 and 4.4 million Part One crimes per million riders respectively.

According to Metro’s statistics, a total of three Part One crimes were reported on the Gold Line in August—among them a non-fatal stabbing incident that left a Monrovia man hospitalized.

The Source’s blog post indicates that many of the crimes that occur in the Metro system, which is policed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, are thefts of valuables such as cell phones and jewelry.

Riders are urged not to wear—or at least not to display—valuable jewelry on the Metro system, and to be careful while talking on cellphones when near or aboard trains.

Here is a link to Metro’s crime statistic data.