One subway, one police force

More cops are always welcome, so the MTA’s vote last week to hire 500 additional officers is a good thing. However, these outstanding police professionals are not transit cops, the 2,500 specialized members of the NYPD’s Transit Bureau who protect the millions using the subway, but MTA cops, who have their own important task of patrolling the suburban commuter lines and the Staten Island Railway.

In the city, MTA cops are posted at Penn Station and Grand Central. That’s where they should remain and leave the underground to the experts.

Wearing the same shoulder patch as their surface NYPD comrades, transit cops can be identified by the brass “TB” insignia on their right collar and one of the dozen Transit Districts on the left collars (there are four in Manhattan and Brooklyn and two each in Queens and Bronx). The districts are subdivided into 36 sectors, covering every station and every inch of track.

All 2,500 transit cops are track safety certified so they can navigate dangerous tunnels and the deadly third rail coursing with 625 volts. They are also fully integrated into the command structure under Commissioner Dermot Shea and his Transit chief Ed Delatorre.

The much smaller force of about 700 MTA police officers have a very different mission spread out across Long Island, upstate and into Connecticut. With their added numbers, they should take over all of Penn Station, displacing the handful of Amtrak cops who protect the NJTransit and Amtrak sections of the train hub.