Officers guarded buildings for 6 months after teen stole bus Metro has been using positions set aside for sworn police officers to hire security guards to protect its bus garages.
And for about six months, Metro had actual police officers getting paid overtime to guard the garages.
Metro has stepped up security at the bus garages and other back-office facilities in recent years. The agency first added more security guards after federal officials recommended tightening security at its buildings, Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said. Then in July 2010, Metro increased security even further after a 19-year-old walked into a garage and drove off with a bus.
But the transit agency didn’t have enough of what it calls “special police officers” to fill all the shifts after the 2010 theft.
So for about six months after the bus theft, Metro police officers filled in to guard the facilities, Stessel said. Most of them were paid overtime for the work.
Special officers wear uniforms but do not have the full certification or arresting powers of sworn police officers. They also make far less money. Special police officers tend to earn $15 to $26 per hour, according to 2010 pay data, while sworn officers can make as much as $41 per hour before overtime.
“If Metro has that money, that’s fantastic, hire more police officers,” said Justin Keating, the attorney for the police officer’s union, Metro Transit Police Labor Committee.
Metro has been paying out high overtime checks, busting its $48 million overtime budget halfway through last year’s budget.
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One Metro cop making $69,559 in salary took home just over $201,000 in 2010 by working regular overtime and doubletime, The Washington Examiner reported in August. The patrol officer logged 4,329 hours in 2010, the equivalent of working nearly 12 hours every day of the year, including holidays and weekends.
After Metro stopped having cops work the security shifts, the police department used positions set aside for police officers to hire more special officers for the garage detail. That meant fewer officers on the street than the agency had budgeted for.
“The positions were used for what we needed at the time,” Stessel said.
Metro’s police department has an authorized force of 436 sworn officers. In June, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, whose force is nearly nine times bigger, testified before a congressional officials that Metro Transit Police is understaffed.
Meanwhile, riders have been asking for more police in the agency’s stations and on buses. Last year, Metro crime spiked to its highest level in at least six years. Last month, a Metrobus operator was stabbed and a Metrobus rider was fatally shot in separate incidents.
Now, Metro is seeking $2 million to hire 32 special officers to fill the garage security shifts in what it calls a high-priority initiative for the upcoming budget, Stessel said. The new special officers will free up a smaller number of positions for police officers, he said. He couldn’t say how many police officer positions would be restored. But any new cops will need to be trained, so there would be lag before riders see new police officers in the stations.
