DART Police - How Safe Are You If the Police Don't Come?

This all began back in May. I hurt my ankle and had to have surgery. Since the surgery was rather extensive, I was unable to drive until September. When I returned to work in June, my only means of reaching work was via public transportation. My employer offers us DART passes, so I took advantage of their offer. The first few weeks on public transportation wasn't particularly terrible, although I had observed several people consuming alcohol on the trains and busses. That changed rapidly on July 5th of this year.

I was on the TRE (Trinity Rail Express) train while it was stopped boarding passengers at Union Station. Keep in mind that there is a DART police station inside Union Station, not 200 feet from the train. I had my laptop and cellphone laid out on the table and was working when two teenage girls rushed on to the train. Spotting my cell phone, they approached me and asked me to call the police. Not wanting to call the police about a trivial matter, I asked them what the problem was. They said that a group of young men had cornered them and physically assaulted them (forcibly groped them). Since they saw the train pull in, they had run on to the train to get away from the young men. They also told me that the young men were chasing them.

I immediately dialed 911 and told the dispatcher that answered that we needed an office on the TRE at Union Station immeidately. Without delay, the 911 dispatcher informed me that they are not allowed to dispatch officers to DART locations and that she would transfer me to DART police dispatch. She connected me promptly to the DART police dispatcher who told me that there was not an officer available. I was told that, despite the severity of the situation, the closest officer was 45 minutes away. I was on my cell phone with the dispatcher, watching several young men going down the side of the train, very methodically from car to car, looking in each one of the windows. I told the dispatcher that I knew that there were officers inside Union Station and begged her to send one out. She refused.

My assumption, which proved to be valid, was that that they were looking for the girls that had asked me to call. I had the girls sit on the floor so that they would not be immediately obvious to the young men, while I hung up and called 911 back. I explained to the 911 dispatcher that I had called once before and that DART had told me that they did not have any officers to send and begged the 911 dispatcher to please send someone. The 911 dispatcher again informed me that they were not able to dispatch officers to a DART location. While I'm on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, the young men in question spot the girls sitting on the floor and board the train car with us. The 911 dispatcher transfers us back to the DART dispatcher.

While I'm one the phone with the DART dispatcher a second time, the young men start trying to force the girls off the train. Unwilling to allow them to be forced off the train, I started yelling at the young men to leave them alone. Since I am still on my cell phone, I'm certain that the DART dispatcher can hear this in the background. We still received no assistance from DART. However, the the ruckus attracted the attention of several of the male passengers who intervened in the situation and forced the all but one of young men to leave. Since the other young men had left, I hung up the phone. That last young man sat down and started trying to chat with girls, which obviously made them uncomfortable. Another female passenger had, in the mean time, gone to fetch one of the conductors. The conductor arrived and made the final young man sit elsewhere on the train.

What truly disturbed me was the fact that were DART offices not 200 feet away and none of them can be bothered to spend 5 minutes settling a potentially life threatening situation. If either of those girls had been your daughter, your wife, your sister, or your mother, what would you want DART to do? It is truly sad when you get better protection from your fellow passengers than you do from the DART police.

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