The young riders

The MBTA's campaign to police after-school traffic hasn't made a dent in Orange Line crime stats

Cityscape by Sarah McNaught

"Move," barks a teenage girl as she snaps her gum and twirls her long, dark ringlets around her finger. It's a Monday afternoon at the Stony Brook MBTA station in Jamaica Plain, and a tall, slender boy is dancing back and forth on the top step to a nearly audible beat coming from his Walkman. "Don't get in my face," he snorts back, lunging at the girl and her two friends as if to strike.

At two o'clock on this windy weekday, the Orange Line station is almost deserted. Three commuters sit silently on the graffiti-scarred wooden benches scattered along the platform. They keep to themselves, careful not to catch the attention of the group of teens.

A stout, middle-aged woman hesitates nervously at the top of the stairs, apparently trying to get past the kids. As they exchange insults, she sees her opening and scoots down the steps. "I don't move for nobody," the boy spits toward the woman as she darts for her train. She plops down in her seat and shakes her head as she watches the kids repeat the scene with two more passengers.

Upstairs, at the entrance to the station, an MBTA employee sits quietly in a booth, mechanically sliding tokens under the glass as commuters approach. "There are no cops here," she says, laughing. The T police, she says, don't patrol this station.

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But they're supposed to. Police have been assigned to Stony Brook and other Orange Line stations to combat problems that for years have plagued stations heavily used by inner-city high-school students. In 1996, an English High School student was shot just 10 feet from two MBTA police officers at the Forest Hills station. That same year, a high-school student was arrested on the Orange Line for inciting a riot. In June of 1997, the arrest of a 15-year-old at Jackson Square for armed robbery was followed by a string of teen crimes that culminated when five teens stabbed a 17-year-old on the Orange Line that November. MBTA statistics show that between January and May of 1998 (the most recent statistics available), 31 sex offenses occurred on the Orange Line.

On September 29, the MBTA announced that Project On-Line, an intervention program officially launched in March after operating informally for almost a year, has helped reduce teen-related crime on the Orange Line. But the evidence does not support the T's claim.

Project On-Line brings probation officers, administrators from nearby schools, and officers from the MBTA, state, Boston, and school police into Orange Line stations for unannounced visits a few days a month in the hope that their presence will curb teens' disruptive behavior after school.

"The idea is for them to watch us watching them," explains MBTA deputy police chief Nadine Taylor-Miller, who worked with the Boston Police's anti-gang unit for 18 years before being recruited last October to enhance the MBTA's community-policing program. "These kids have a definite code of behavior at home and one at school, but they don't have one here or anywhere else where they are not supervised. We are here to instill that public code of behavior."

Though police presence does appear to have a modest effect on the few days a month that the stations are monitored, Project On-Line has its share of problems. Not all stations are included in the program, and not all the monitors show up when they are supposed to. Even on days that Project On-Line is in full swing, kids hang around the stations, torment commuters, and sometimes break the law. Total crime on the Orange Line has not gone down.

In fact, judging from MBTA statistics, it has increased. In 1995, there were 324 crimes on the Orange Line. A year later, the number had increased to 391. Although the Orange Line crime total dropped to 343 last year, the numbers have shot up to 407 so far in 1998.

The MBTA can't account for how many of those were teen-related crimes, but Taylor-Miller insists that the project has made a difference, pointing out that the number of arrests along the Orange Line has gone up from 92 last year to 164 in 1998. "Of course, our presence on those days Project On-Line is running is not going to stop crime completely, but I believe it does make the kids stop and think before doing something illegal," she says.

The MBTA claims that kids now clear out of the Forest Hills station in as little as half an hour after school, whereas it used to take 90 minutes to disperse them. But on a recent Project On-Line afternoon, kids who exited the train at 1:45 were still lingering at 3 p.m., despite the presence of three MBTA officers and Taylor-Miller.

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"Forest Hills station. This is the last stop."

It's 2:45 p.m. on November 16. The conductor is barely audible over the din of young voices echoing off the fiberglass walls of the train. The bell sounds. The doors squeak open and about 200 high-school kids, ages 13 to 18, pour out of the cars.

The rumble of feet grows louder as the pack of teenagers mount the stairs leading up from the platform and cram through the turnstiles. Groups of four and five begin to congregate in front of the doughnut shop and the flower stand inside the station. Others migrate toward the popcorn pushcart.

Girls wander around in their Tommy Hilfiger jackets and boot-cut pants, squealing and hugging each other. Boys sporting baggy low-rise jeans, hooded sweatshirts, and baseball caps strike poses and incite mock arguments with their friends.

Engulfed by the group, three MBTA police officers exchange pleasantries as they herd the kids toward the exits. In the midst of the commotion, a very slender young man in a black knit cap and a Chicago Bulls parka enters the station from the street, pushing a silver bike. The front spokes are bent and broken. The teenager is alone and visibly nervous. He is well concealed by the kids milling around him.

Just a few feet away, Taylor-Miller glances at the boy but directs her attention to three girls who have already been asked twice to leave the station. The youth lingers for about 20 minutes, checks his pager, scans the crowd one last time, and heads back out the same door, peeling one of the decals off the bike. He doesn't appear to be intimidated by the officers' presence.

Asked about the incident later, Taylor-Miller admits that it was a suspicious scene. "Sometimes you just don't know what the situation is," she says.

But though no one confronted the youth, officials insist that Project On-Line's visits are discouraging trouble on the T. John D. Sisco, director of safety for the Boston Public Schools and chief of the school police, says he attended English High School and remembers hanging at Dudley station after school to meet his friends. "Of course this program is not going to end years and years of habit, but it is making a difference," says Sisco. "If we patrolled the stations more, it might be overkill. Right now they [the students] don't know when or where we will show up."

But that isn't really true. The kids do know which stations are heavily monitored and which stations are not. And there's little danger of overkill: sometimes when participating school and police officials are scheduled to monitor the stations, they don't show up.

The project's main focus is on two stations: Forest Hills, which has about 4000 kids pass through every day between 1:45 and 3 p.m., and Roxbury Crossing. Police are supposed to ride the train from one to the other -- or at least from the Stony Brook station, halfway between them, to Forest Hills -- but there were no officers in the cars on November 16. Similarly, no project participants could be found at either Stony Brook or Jackson Square, where there have been some problems in the past with violence and theft.

November 16 is not the only day Project On-Line has experienced a poor turnout. On October 30, when the Phoenix arrived at Roxbury Crossing to ride along with Taylor-Miller, no one -- including her -- showed up. And no police or school administrators could be found at any of the stations along the route.

Taylor-Miller admits that unless she stays on top of all the participants, the project will go unstaffed. When Taylor-Miller eventually arrived at Forest Hills on November 16, it took her about 10 minutes -- and three attempts on her walkie-talkie -- to summon the three officers who were supposed to be monitoring the teens exiting the train. The officers were neither on the platform nor in the station's entry area.

"They aren't here all the time," says Sharday Gilfillan, a 13-year-old seventh grader at the Shaw School. "I never see any of my teachers here, and I hardly ever see anyone on the trains -- just a few cops here in the station."

In fact, Gilfillan's school is not part of the program. But administrators from schools that do participate admit that they sometimes don't man the stations when they're supposed to. William Coffey, assistant headmaster at English High School, was absent from the most recent Project On-Line visit to the Green Street station because he's been busy filling in for English High's headmaster, who recently had a heart attack.

"Unfortunately, I was not at Green Street for the latest Project On-Line because I had to attend other meetings," explains Coffey. "There are other times that we are either understaffed or we forget." Coffey adds that maintaining a more regular presence at the train stations would mean taking staff members out of the schools. Although Project On-Line is an after-school program, administrators who participate need to leave before the end of the day.

Joe Moscaritolo, the director of community affairs at Madison Park High School, shares that concern. "I was at the [Project On-Line] meetings in the beginning, but I had to stop because I didn't want to have to leave the building," he says. "My job is to be here at the school with the kids."

But a faculty presence is a key aspect of Project On-Line. Even the police admit that the kids seem to be more intimidated by the presence of school administrators than by the police.

"The uniform doesn't faze them," explains Taylor-Miller. "But when they see their teachers here, they are much quicker to behave. It's as if they don't know us and may never see us again, but they know they have to face their faculty the next day."

But Erika Aybar, a 15-year-old at Hyde Park High School, says that she not only isn't daunted by school staff but would like to see them on the trains more often. "We feel like we are being protected [from the police] when we see people from our school here, like they are watching out for us," explains Aybar as she stands by the phones at Forest Hills with three of her friends, anxiously awaiting the arrival of two more friends from another school. "But I really don't see them that much. I'd feel better if I did."

An MBTA officer approaches the girls and tells them to move along. Although they put up a fuss, complaining that it is cold outside, they begin to gather their belongings and move toward the station's side entrance. But as soon as the officer walks away, the teens stop and resume their conversation as if nothing had happened. Twenty minutes later, Aybar and her friends are still in the station.

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Another reason school personnel are vital to making Project On-Line work is that the police are hampered by jurisdictional confusion.

The school police believe they have no enforcement powers within MBTA stations. "Either myself or my assistant are the only ones who go down to the stations on the days the project is running," explains Chief Sisco. "My officers don't have jurisdiction. It would cause a union grievance. So the school police will go down to the station and we will provide a uniformed presence, but we're actually not working."

Meanwhile, the MBTA police believe that the Boston Police have jurisdiction only outside the stations, according to Taylor-Miller. The Boston Police, however, say that they can respond to crimes inside MBTA stations.

To complicate matters, the MBTA police are often not taken seriously. "Most people think we are security guards, despite our guns," says Taylor-Miller. "And it's no secret that people, especially kids who don't realize we are officers, don't take us as seriously as they would a real police force."

Despite all these problems, there is hope for Project On-Line. T officers have just been issued citation books, enabling them to write tickets against kids who litter, loiter, or deface public property.

And in a move that will add clout to the program, Gretchen Grave, who works for the Boston School Department, is trying to establish two truancy centers that kids will be ordered to report to if caught skipping school. Right now, explains Taylor-Miller, there is no law against truancy, and no monitoring system for truant students. "And unfortunately, some of the kids who hang around the station do so because they are truant," she says.

Finally, a new phase of Project On-Line will send MBTA employees -- from bus drivers to police officers -- into local schools to talk about what they do and how they help the public.

"We know we have a long way to go," says Taylor-Miller. "But I truly believe our presence is both comforting to the kids and to the general public who rely on the T to get around."

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It's a little after 2 p.m. on Friday, November 13. Cardboard cotton-candy cones and hot-dog wrappers swirl around the Forest Hills entry as a gust of air rushes up the stairwell, announcing the imminent arrival of an outbound Orange Line train. Today there are no police in the station and no school administrators riding the cars. Hordes of teenagers get off the train and take the stairs two at a time, exuding energy in anticipation of the weekend.

"Hey, where are you going?" shouts a baseball-capped 16-year-old as his two friends head toward the exit. "He ain't here yet. I ain't leaving until I bust his ass." The boy's two cronies hesitate a second, scan the situation, and turn on their heels to join their friend.

As they stand by the row of pay phones to the right of the turnstiles, each one takes turns shouting taunts at younger kids as they walk by. This time, no one is there to move them along.

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.