Californians were promised a high-speed rail train that could get a person from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours. Instead, they’re stuck with freight trains that can’t even make their way out of downtown Los Angeles without being robbed.
Union Pacific revealed earlier this month that train robberies in California have increased by 356% from October 2020 to October 2021. On average, 90 containers are broken into every single day, according to Lupe Valdez, a spokeswoman for the company.
Pictures of the railroad tracks in downtown Los Angeles near Lincoln Heights, where trains stop to unload, confirm the company’s story. Thousands of emptied and shredded packages stolen from cargo containers have been left around the tracks. People regularly stop by the area to scavenge for anything that’s been left.
“I have been with Union Pacific for 16 years, and I have never, ever seen this situation to this degree,” Valdez said in a statement.
To deal with the problem, Union Pacific hired its own private police force that arrests looters and turns them over to Los Angeles authorities. But most of the time, the city and county refuse to prosecute the thieves, Valdez said.
“What my officers tell me on the ground is many times people come back and say, ‘I just got out and I’m back. They can’t do anything to me,’ which I think is insane in terms of our situation, with what we’re faced with,” she said.
Union Pacific has tried to appeal directly to Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, asking him in a letter last month to reconsider his decision not to prosecute certain misdemeanor charges, such as theft. But Gascon appears unwilling to budge, forcing the shipping company to look into its backup option: finding an alternate route outside of Los Angeles to avoid the robberies.
They’d probably have better luck just leaving California altogether.
