Petition Started To Push For More DART Security

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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - There's a push for more security on Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) trains, and at their stations.

A North Texas man started a petition on change.org, after he says his 21-year-old daughter was attacked and robbed on a train. As of Friday evening, the petition already had more than 400 supporters and CBS 11 News spoke with one of those people.

The petition is a call to change DART policing.

A year ago Stacy Monroe became a DART Train crime victim. "It happened on a night I was coming home from school," she recalled.

Monroe has joined the campaign against the public transit agency. "I feel like these criminals doing all this, if they see the security presence, police on the trains, they're not going to do that."

At 1:30 Friday afternoon, at the DART Lovers Lane, three trains come and go. Three forty-five in the afternoon, from Forest Lane to Walnut Hill, and still no sign of one of the 200 members of the DART Police force.

Morgan Lyons, the Director or Media Relations for DART, was presented with one of the most frequently asked questions received by the transit agency -- Why wouldn't I see a uniformed officer every time I get on a train? He answered, "Part of it is the management of the resources, just as you cannot have a police officer on every street corner in the North Texas region."

DART officials cite a system with 100,000 daily riders on trains and another 150,000 on buses, as crime free of a system you will find.

During 2014, there were 96 robberies and 23 aggravated assaults on DART Rail. The number doesn't include the stabbing of a Dallas woman last week at a downtown DART Station - security cameras recorded that crime.

But victims like Monroe say uniformed officers consistently on trains is a public safety tool DART deems a non-priority.

Lyons said. "We understand they want to see a uniformed presence regularly, and that's why we work to deploy officers in visible areas, when we are the busiest."

DART operates 100 trains on 90 miles of routes. They have emergency buttons and cameras at stations. But riders say those tools are used after a crime occurs.

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