Fitzgerald mum on armed officers for fare collection

A coalition of groups against the proposed use of armed officers for fare enforcement on Port Authority vehicles came away dissatisfied from a meeting Friday with Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.

Representatives from the Thomas Merton Center, Casa San Jose and the Alliance for Police Accountability met with Mr. Fitzgerald at the Allegheny County Courthouse. Mr. Fitzgerald, who oversees the authority, wouldn’t take a position on the use of armed officers for fare enforcement and said he would wait for a recommendation from the authority’s new executive director who starts Tuesday, said Gabriel McMorland, executive director of the Merton Center.

Mr. Fitzgerald wouldn’t comment later on the private meeting, his spokeswoman said.

Mr. McMorland said Mr. Fitzgerald listened to the advocates’ concerns about treating fare evasion as a criminal matter, subject to a $300 fine and a criminal background check, rather than a civil matter such as a parking fine. The cashless fare policy on the subway system was scheduled to begin last summer but has been delayed by equipment problems until at least the second quarter of this year.

The advocates fear potentially deadly confrontations between the officers and public school students, recent immigrants with limited language skills, and mental patients, among others, who may not understand why they are being approached.

The advocates are frustrated, Mr. McMorland said, because Mr. Fitzgerald won’t take a position on an issue they have been pushing for 10 months. It began under former authority CEO Ellen McLean and continued under interim CEO David Donahoe, who served from July through this week.

“This is the third CEO in the last year, and he won’t take a position,” Mr. McMorland said of the county executive. “As a leader, he often is very open about what his vision is for the county. Why not this?”

Krystle Knight, the Merton Center’s community organizer, said she’s bothered that Mr. Fitzgerald seemed more interested in hearing from incoming CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman than from transit users.

“We would hope he would look at our people as experts on what people are concerned about,” she said.

The groups say other transit agencies that treat fare evasion as a civil matter and use unarmed civilians for enforcement do not have more passengers who refuse to pay.