最新杏吧原创

The officers, who work for Bi-State Development and were hired to help keep the MetroLink public transit system safe, have all graduated from police academies and are POST-certified to work in law enforcement in Missouri.

But when they ride the MetroLink in 最新杏吧原创 County, they don鈥檛 write tickets.

Not if they see a fare evasion. Not if they see public drunkenness, or a drug deal, or an assault.

They are afraid they might be arrested.

鈥淭here is a lot of trepidation by our officers,鈥� says Metro Public Safety Chief Richard Zott. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a cloud. Just being charged could have an adverse effect on their careers.鈥�

The problem is 最新杏吧原创 County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch. In 2016, he eight Metro officers for impersonating a peace officer. The dispute arose when both the city and 最新杏吧原创 County recognized a problem with the identifying number on the ticket forms used by Metro officers. It had been accepted for years, but because Metro wasn鈥檛 officially its own police force recognized by the state 鈥� it has federal recognition 鈥� controversy ensued.

Metro officers continued writing tickets in St. Clair County on the Illinois side of the system. And the city reached an accommodation after a few months.

But not 最新杏吧原创 County.

Zott and his boss, Bi-State CEO John Nations, hope the election of Wesley Bell, in the Democratic primary for prosecutor last week, changes things.

鈥淲e believe that everything should be done to make the system safe,鈥� Nations says.

If his officers had actually committed a crime, then why no prosecution, he wonders?

鈥淲e鈥檝e never heard anything from Bob McCulloch about the case,鈥� Nations says.

A spokesman for McCulloch didn鈥檛 return a phone call or email seeking an update on the status of the investigation, if there is one. A similar inquiry a few months ago was also ignored. A spokesman for Bell said he is aware of the issue and plans to review it once he takes office in January.

At the time that McCulloch announced that Metro officers could no longer write tickets in 最新杏吧原创 County, he offered differing explanations of what the problem was. But the end result was the same: Riders of MetroLink knew that there was little chance starting in 2016 that there would be fare enforcement in the county.

That made the system less safe, Nations charges.

So does this: It鈥檚 been about the same amount of time since the 最新杏吧原创 County officers riding the trains stopped using the same radio frequency as the Metro officers, making communication when crimes are seen much more difficult.

Until 2016, all of the police officers who rode the trains, from 最新杏吧原创 city and county, and St. Clair County, used the same frequency. Around the time the county started having issues with how Metro wrote tickets, that changed. The county, and then the city, changed frequencies.

Despite a memorandum of understanding signed by all the political leaders of the system in May 2017 that they would fix their communication problem, officers in the city and 最新杏吧原创 County still use a different frequency. That memorandum came about in part as a reaction to I wrote in 2017 about county officers caught on camera sleeping in offices and putting tape on cameras to cover their tracks.

鈥淲e need to be on the same frequency,鈥� Zott says. 鈥淓veryone was on the same frequency before, and it worked extremely well.鈥�

Capt. Scott Melies of 最新杏吧原创 County, who supervises law enforcement on the entire system, declined an interview through a spokesman.

In an email, county police spokesman Shawn McGuire said the effort to fix the radio frequency problem is still in the 鈥渢echnology phase, attempting to figure out if it鈥檚 possible to be on the same frequency. Once that phase is over, it will then move to the cost analysis phase.鈥�

Sheriff Richard Watson of St. Clair County agrees that the communication problem should be a priority.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 the key to this whole thing,鈥� Watson says of safety on the transit system. 鈥淚 want to see some kind of commonality with communication. If everybody works together, we can secure this line from the airport to Scott Air Force Base.鈥�

Watson is doing his part. He has started to allow his officers to help make that part of the line more secure. Watson said 95 percent of the people who ride MetroLink from his area want to go to the city, for work or entertainment, so making the accommodation made sense.

It鈥檚 that sort of cooperative effort that Nations says he still doesn鈥檛 see from 最新杏吧原创 County, where his officers can鈥檛 write tickets, and even if they could, couldn鈥檛 talk on the radio to the county officers who also secure the line.

鈥淥ur relationships and the results we see from them have been very good in St. Clair County,鈥� Nations says. 鈥淲e need that kind of cooperation on the Missouri side of the river.鈥�