County Could Replace Private Firm With Deputies or Transit Rangers

A Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) bus from Gillig. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

A task force working on security for the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) is looking at replacing the current private contractors with sheriff’s deputies, non-law enforcement “transit rangers” or some mix of both.

The county board created a task force to focus on transit security in its 2023 budget, after years of bus operators and their union leaders complaining about a lack of security on the buses and the inadequacy of the private security guard. Operators testified to being shot with B guns, stalked, spit on, physically assaulted, threatened with weapons and cursed at.

The task force discussions have been wide-ranging as the group takes in public comment and testimonials from bus operators and the public on the transit system’s fare policy, law enforcement response times, first-person accounts of assaults on county buses, MCTS procedures for reporting incidents and more.

After four meetings, the task force repeatedly returned to the idea of replacing the current security contractor, Allied Universal, with something new. In 2022 the county paid $2.7 million to the company, which provides approximately 30 transit security officers.

Security ideas discussed have included expanding the county’s park rangers program to create new transit rangers and a new transit security division in the Milwaukee County Sheriff‘s Office (MCSO). The task force has also informally discussed ideas including undercover law enforcement officers doing a ride along on routes with a high volume of security calls, and also a mixed response including law enforcement and transit rangers.

The task force plans to have a formal recommendation for the county board by early July. Whatever the recommendation is, it is likely the cost will be higher than the current system. In early May, Sup. Peter Burgelis told his colleagues on the Committee on Transportation and Transit, “I’ll tell you now, the solutions the task force will have will not be inexpensive.”

Sheriff Transit Division

MCSO was asked to devise a plan for taking over security and responded with a report laying out the creation of a new transit security division at an upfront cost of $13 million and an annual cost of approximately $8 million.

The County Board has looked into using Sheriff’s deputies for transit security more than once in the past decade, each time finding that it will be more expensive than the current private security. In 2019, MCSO officials told supervisors that the office believes it would need a transit division to provide security properly. “In order to do it right you need to have a division, you need to have a command structure,” said then-Deputy Inspector Daniel Hughes

MCSO Inspector Doug Holton Jr. said the same thing when he presented the MCSO report, which looked at security in the Cleveland transit system because it is comparable to Milwaukee. It found that Cleveland has a police department specifically for transit with more than 100 sworn law enforcement officers. MCSO estimates it would need at least 60 deputies to shift transit security from being reactive to being proactive, Holton said.

“To have our squads respond quickly, when needed or requested, to have enough supervision for those officers, we know how important that is, as well as detectives to be able to do follow-up, ” Holton said. “How many times are people assaulted and the person runs off the bus and runs away? That needs proper follow-up.”

Holton said it would likely take two years to staff up a transit division. The MCSO report also stated that if the budget for Allied Universal was simply shifted to the MCSO it would allow for approximately 15 to 17 full-time deputies, and that it does not think that’s a “feasible strategy for ensuring public safety on MCTS buses.”

Transit Rangers

Another proposal is to create a new class of unarmed, uniformed transit security based on the Milwaukee County Park Rangers program to be called Transit Rangers.

These would be uniformed, unarmed security officers that ride county buses or respond to calls for security assistance. They would also be able to write citations for ordinance violations, though the existing park rangers rarely do. Todd Pisarski, Safety Security and Training Manager for the Park Rangers, said the rangers resolve most incidents that don’t require law enforcement through conversation as opposed to issuing a ticket.

“To be honest with you, it is tedious to write the county ordinance violation,” Pisarski said. “Again, we’d rather talk to somebody for 15-20 minutes, before bringing that out.”

He noted that because park rangers cannot legally detain or arrest someone, they often have to call law enforcement to issue a citation because they cannot legally make someone identify themselves.

Sup. Ryan Clancy a co-chair of the task force, likes the Transit Rangers idea because they would be an unarmed security presence on county buses with “the ability to bring in law enforcement when they’re warranted, and not when they’re not.”

Sup. Juan Miguel Martinez, who authored the amendment to the 2023 budget creating the transit security task force, told Urban Milwaukee that he’s planning to author a resolution to move forward with a Transit Ranger Pilot Program. “And that’s what me and Sup. Clancy kind of had in mind when I had created the task force, like a Transit Rangers program, because we don’t want to over-police.”

At the last task force meeting, Sawyer Schmitt, MCTS Safety and Security Coordinator, said that replacing non-sworn private security with non-sworn Transit Rangers won’t solve the safety and security problems in the transit system, because he thinks the incidents described by operators require a response from sworn law enforcement.

Transit Union on Security

The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998 has called for sheriff’s deputies on MCTS buses or greater response from law enforcement to the incidents occurring on buses.

ATU Vice President Michael Brown, who sits on the security task force, said at a task force meeting that the union requested undercover sheriff’s deputies, but not the creation of a new transit security division. In a May 15 letter, Brown and Union President Donnell Shorter proposed a Transit Ranger pilot program with 50 rangers in the first year, and asked the task force to make such a recommendation to the full board. The union conditioned its support for a ranger program on “ATU continuing to be part of the transit ranger program development process.”

“We want to ensure security calls go directly to rangers working from the dispatch office. Process for conflict resolution must be established, including removing threatening passengers from buses. Our goal is for drivers and passengers to feel safe on buses and to improve service for all of Milwaukee County.”