MCTS Will Hire Its Own Personnel For Security

An MCTS bus became a crime scene after a shooting occurred aboard it. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) is planning a major change to how it secures and monitors its buses.

Beginning in 2025, MCTS will begin to deploy security personnel it directly employees, as opposed to outsourced security guards from Allied Universal. According to MCTS officials, the private security company will have a gradually reduced presence.

System officials previously floated the idea during previous policy debates surrounding transit security.

The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998 (ATU) has long advocated for better security, as drivers have been assaulted both on and off the bus while on duty. In particular, the union and operators have called on MCTS and the county to replace the private security contractor Allied Universal.

In 2023, a county task force proposed creating a new security force called Transit Rangers — based on the county’s Park Rangers — to replace the private firm. The rangers would have been county employees, not MCTS employees.

The ranger proposal did not find support in County Executive David Crowley‘s administration, nor from MCTS. If the county was going to stand up its own transit security it should be within MCTS, transit officials proposed at the time. Officials also expressed concern about the potential cost of the transit ranger program.

Now MCTS is moving forward with its own security force. Under Crowley’s proposed 2025 budget, the transit system will begin using some of the funding set aside for private security to hire 19 county-trained and employed public safety officers.

“We hope that will increase the quality of those services as compared to our outsourced model,” Tim Hosch, MCTS CFO told the county board’s Committee on Finance earlier this month. “It will also provide added layers of management and oversight for those TSO’s that are still in place.”

The change comes as the Federal Transit Agency recently released new rules that require local transit agencies to look for security challenges within their systems and report back how they plan to address them. The new rule is thanks, in part, to lobbying by ATU and Transport Workers Union (TWU). FTA Deputy Secretary Polly Trottenberg thanked the international presidents for the two unions when announcing the new rules.

Under its contract with Allied Universal, MCTS will be able to gradually reduce the number of private security personnel it deploys within the system, Hocsh said. He also said that the new county-managed security personnel will be treated as a pilot program and that MCTS won’t stop using Allied Universal personnel altogether.

The proposal is part of the 2025 proposed budget and subject to Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors approval.