At 12:17 p.m. on a recent Saturday, Metro Transit Police and other emergency personnel responded to a reported passenger overdose on the Green Line, the light-rail train connecting downtown Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul. At 12:33 p.m., they responded to another call for a passenger overdose on the same train line. And at 12:44 p.m., yet a third call came in.

None of the calls were fatal, but the three incidents on the Green Line within a 30-minute span were enough to give even Metro Transit Police Chief Ernest Morales III pause.

With 30 years on the New York Police Department behind him, including a stint as commander in its transit bureau, Morales bought a retirement home in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, just before changing course and choosing to stay in the field a bit longer running his own department. He took the helm of Metro Transit Police, a department of more than 200 full- and part-time officers and civilian personnel, toward the end of February 2023.

A year into the job, some Metro Transit drivers, passengers and other officials say customer behavior has notably improved on the Blue Line, the light-rail corridor that connects downtown Minneapolis to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

It’s one of many routes that helped buoy overall system ridership by 16% last year over 2022 figures. Light-rail ridership alone was up 19%.

Morales credits the combined efforts of sworn police officers, community service officers-in-training, state-funded social workers and street ambassadors, who board the Blue Line from key staging areas like U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis to enforce a freshly-updated passenger code of conduct.

But the challenge in front of him is clear. The Green Line needs help.

With more presence, ‘the behavior will go down’

On Feb. 3, a 27-year-old man was shot in the stomach while riding the Green Line around 12th and Robert streets; the shooting occurred about 7:30 p.m., while he was being robbed, he told police. His injuries were reported as non-life-threatening.

A 33-year-old man who died of a suspected drug overdose was just recently identified, a month after his body was removed from a Green Line train car that rolled into the Capitol/Rice Street Station on the night of Jan. 13. Putting his picture on the Metro Transit Police Department’s newly-launched social media channels helped, as did sharing it with the news media.

“Immediately, it paid dividends,” said Morales, shadowed by reporters Tuesday as he rode the train from downtown St. Paul to U.S. Bank Stadium.

It wasn’t the first body to be pulled from the Green Line. Morales suspects it won’t be the last.

“Unfortunately, it’s pretty commonplace,” he said. “As we have more physical presence, human presence, the behavior will go down.”

Often, the incidents that turn commuters away are much more mundane, like litter and loitering.

Metro Transit Police Chief Ernest Morales III, right, and Captain Rick Grates smiles while waiting for a Green Line train at the Unions Station platform in St. Paul on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Center car problem

Smoking remains a leading problem, said Morales, especially in the center car, which is the car least visited by drivers and other Metro Transit personnel in a three-car train. Every 45 minutes or so, after a train arrives at its final destination — the downtown St. Paul Union Depot or Target Field Station in Minneapolis — a driver will get out and switch to the train car at the opposite end, which then leads the way back.

But no personnel sit in the center car for the duration of the trip, making it the preferred location for drug users, drinkers and others violating the passenger code of conduct. Late Tuesday afternoon, a young woman — thin and pale — could be seen pulling out a drug pipe on the heavily-littered eastbound train as it passed the Raymond Avenue station. Then her sweatshirt went over her head to hide her behavior as she sat with friends.

In an adjoining train car, a woman screamed profanities at a man seated behind her, who continued to engage with her, arguing as he followed her down the aisle to the car’s other end as she walked away. A passenger texted the emergency number — 612-349-7200 — and three Metro Transit police officers boarded a short time later. The man, refusing to get off the train, was arrested.

And an arrest takes time. The Green and Blue Lines share tracks in downtown Minneapolis, so a delay on one train can back up the entire system on both lines. Like a driver shortage, unruly behavior — even holding open doors — becomes an obstacle toward frequency and reliability.

Track maintenance has been an issue this winter. But “passenger behaviors like door-holding are the leading cause of delays,” said Drew Kerr, a Metro Transit spokesperson.

Two-car trains this summer?

The so-called “center car problem” has not gone unnoticed by management. Metro Transit is considering running two-car trains this summer, as it did during a pilot program in 2022, which also could improve frequency while reducing maintenance demand for its overstretched maintenance crews.

That’s nothing but good news to Vince Netz, a daily rider who said he has a “love/hate relationship with the light rail.”

Netz, who runs an information technology consulting firm based by the Westgate station near the Minneapolis-St. Paul border, believes two-car trains “will solve tons of issues” on the Green Line, which launched in 2014 to predictions it would boost investment along University Avenue, a once-thriving business corridor that has struggled to retain commerce.

“This is supposed to be the primary economic development engine of University Avenue, and it’s a party bus,” said Netz, a Prospect Park resident. “I see it every day.”

During the pandemic, Metro Transit — like other transit authorities around the nation — pulled back officers from consistent face-to-face contact with riders. As shelters limited bed space, those with few resources took to trains and buses.

Change the mindset

Then the May 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer — and the racially-charged riots that followed — created an environment where, for many departments, avoiding unnecessary confrontation seemed prudent. Public transit became known as an unregulated space where fares would not be checked, smoking would not be disallowed.

Numbers bear that out: Metro Transit officers issued 1,308 misdemeanor citations for fare evasion in 2019, 573 in 2020 and just 10 in 2021. The citations climbed to 49 in 2022. Late last year, following new legislative authorization, community service officers began issuing administrative citations — non-criminal fines — instead of penalties that would show up on a criminal record.

During Tuesday’s ride, enforcing basic rules like keeping voices at a reasonable timbre struck more than one rider as an outrageous request.

Morales said his task is to “change that mindset — there’s a mindset of entitlement, because they’re so used to not being held accountable to that code of conduct. … Smoking indoors has been outlawed for years. It’s a misdemeanor.”

Steering the homeless to help

On Tuesday, the Green Line began playing public service announcements featuring recorded messages from young children, some of them the kids of Metro Transit officials, urging passengers to think of the youth around them before they inhale.

“Love your lungs,” says a voice dipped in saccharine sweetness. “Please don’t smoke at the station or on the train. You harm my health when we ride together.”

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Another strategy has been to steer the homeless toward housing and those with addictions toward treatment, if they’re open to it. With $2 million in state funding, Metro Transit contracted 10 outreach agencies last year to provide street ambassadors and other intervention resources, such as drug counseling.

“I was a 20-year meth addict,” said Andy Baseman, a certified peer recovery specialist with Mental Health Minnesota, a St. Paul-based nonprofit. “I’m a resource. I can do everything from helping people get into treatment to just sitting around B.S.-ing.”

Baseman hands out gloves, hats and more, but he can also deliver Narcan, an emergency treatment for opioid overdose, or advanced first aid.

“Empathy is a huge part of it,” said Soumi Nandi, another outreach worker with mental health training. “Not everyone is going to change, but if you catch someone at the right time … recovery is possible.”

The $2 million from the state also funds overtime for partner agencies such as the University of Minnesota police to board the trains, but it’s likely to run out this June. That raises questions about how outreach efforts on the Green Line will continue beyond the “HAT” program.

That’s HAT as in the Homeless Action Team. Metro Transit police are the only law enforcement officials in Minnesota with a direct link to housing resources through the Metropolitan Council’s emergency Section 8 housing vouchers, a dedicated resource not lost on officer Katherine Kompelien, a member of the department’s small but busy HAT squad.

The federally-funded vouchers, which come with security deposits and other landlord incentives, helped Kompelien and her crew connect some 300 riders to housing in the first four years of the program alone. Kompelien, who has been assigned to HAT since its founding in 2018, has found homeless residents living in elevators and camping out in park-and-rides at suburban transit stations, a refutation of the myth that homelessness is solely an urban problem.

She’s known in the department for policing with a conversational approach through face-to-face outreach that begins at 6 a.m.

“If I find them and we make a connection, then we can help them,” she said.

Still, when Morales exits a train car at the Snelling Avenue station, he immediately informs a sizable group of loiterers — some draped in blankets — they can exit the station or go to jail. “Your choice,” he said. The group departs.

Morales said the issues plaguing public transit are symptoms of the issues facing society, and they need to be addressed through more government collaboration around housing the unsheltered, chemical dependency treatment and mental health supports.

“This is much bigger than police,” he said. “The police are not going to fix the problem.”

Metro Transit Police Chief Ernest Morales III watches as riders enter and exit the Green Line light rail train in St. Paul on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024. Morales and his team are working to improve public safety issues on the Green Line. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

A political remove

Some transit riders (and even some Metro Transit employees) have complained about a level of political remove between lawmakers, Met Council leadership and the transit system.

A decade ago, a reporter for the Star Tribune surveyed the 17-member Met Council and examined usage data from their farecards. Other than for the occasional sporting event, most members of the gubernatorially-appointed body rarely rode the public transit they oversaw.

Metro Transit General Manager Lesley Kandaras rides the Green Line light rail train in St. Paul on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024. Kandaras, who was appointed Metro Transit General Manager last July, said she’s made it a point to require executive-level leadership within Metro Transit — some 50 desk jobs — to ride public transit at least four times per month. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“Before policymakers make policies, they should experience the issues firsthand,” Morales said. “Maybe you should go on a ride-along, see what a police officer does on a daily basis. You should immerse yourself in the problem before trying to pass laws to fix it.”

A decade later, it’s still rare to see elected officials from city or county government aboard the light rail, at least in the east metro. Lesley Kandaras, who was appointed Metro Transit general manager last July, said she’s made it a point to require executive-level leadership within Metro Transit — some 50 desk jobs — to ride public transit at least four times per month.

“It ends up being part of your performance review,” said Kandaras, who borrowed the program from a predecessor and expanded it to more personnel.

In the interest of keeping an open line of communication with passengers, five top officials with Metro Transit and the Met Council rode the metro’s two light-rail lines for four days in mid-January as part of a first-ever “Listening Sessions Tour.”

In addition to Morales and Kandaras, the group included Metro Transit Chief Operating Officer Brian Funk, Met Council Chair Charlie Zelle and Met Council Transportation Chair Deb Barber. On Feb. 5, Metro Transit Police launched the department’s first social media pages on Facebook, X (previously known as Twitter) and Instagram.

Morales, in his first video update on Facebook, said he’ll share public safety highlights there weekly.

More listening sessions are on the way. The Hamline Midway Coalition and Union Park District Council are hosting a community meeting with transit leadership on Feb. 22.

Recruiting others

As with many other industries during a time of national labor shortage, Metro Transit has struggled to hire and retain workers at all levels, from cops to drivers. Recruiting police can be especially difficult. In 2020, the year Floyd was murdered, recruitment nationally dropped 20%, according to the Police Executive Research Forum.

It rebounded the next year, but still stayed behind 2019 levels, at a time of increased officer resignations and retirements. The Metro Transit Police force, which is authorized for 171 full-time officers, currently employs 113.

Metro Transit is offering hiring bonuses of up to $4,000 for new officers, up to $8,000 for more experienced officers making lateral transfers and up to $18,000 in tuition reimbursement for new community service officers. As the Green Line passed a bus, Kandaras pointed to an advertising wrap covering much of its exterior with the smiling face of a new recruit. In some oversized ads, Morales himself is pictured.

After all, it’s not often that a Puerto Rican police chief from New York City lands in Minnesota. He’s visited that retirement home in Old San Juan three times since he bought it, but he figures he still has work to do up north. Morales looked around him on Tuesday, after the most unruly passengers had been kicked off a Green Line train car, and appreciated the quiet.

“This,” he said, “is the way a car should be.”

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