UPDATE: Thursday, 11:45 a.m.
Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn told The Washington Examiner on Thursday that the agency will now add an asterisk to its homicide listings, explaining that homicides that occur on the system within the District fall to the Metropolitan Police Department.
However, he denied that the agency was “punting” its crimes to other agencies — even as he accused his neighbors of doing the very thing.
Earlier Thursday, at a board of directors committee meeting, he accused other jurisdictions of pushing their crimes onto Metro so they don’t have to count them on their books. He said a rule created a few years ago makes Metro responsible for crimes that occur at all 12,000 of its bus stops, or even within 150 feet of a bus stop.
“No one likes to have statistics,” he said. “You’re having an assault here and we take it … The term is called ‘punting.”
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How about a new take on the old saying “when is a rose not a rose”? If a person is murdered on the Metro system, does it really have to count as a murder?
According to Metro, the answer is no.
As The Washington Examiner first reported Wednesday, the agency’s 2010 crime statistics said the transit agency had no homicides all year.
But Lawrence Perkins, 21, was found fatally stabbed inside the Congress Heights station on May 30 just before the system shut down for the night.
Metro spokeswoman Angela Gates said the case was not included in the agency’s statistics because D.C. police “have jurisdiction over all homicides.” Hence the report listed no homicides in the transit system. It did not include any footnotes to explain why, though.
