At the beginning of the legislative session, we reported on East Portland Representative Jefferson’s Smith zany scheme to pass a bill mandating classical music be played at high crime MAX stops. The thinking was that blasting classical music would be a way to deter crime without spending basically any money. “It has a calming influence,” said Smith at the time.
TriMet didn’t wait for a bill, they went ahead and started playing classical tunes at the 162nd Avenue transit stop. Two months later, the numbers seem to show that reports of crime are actually decreasing at the stop, while they’re going up at other stops.
Smith’s office sent me a link to the blog run by Rosewood neighbors who crunched the numbers of police calls from the 162nd station compared to other East Portland MAX stops. Here are the stats From November 16, 2009 to January 12 2010:
• 162nd Ave Transit Station: 40 percent decrease in calls for service
• 148th Ave Transit Station: 4 percent increase in calls for service
• 122nd Ave Transit Station: 12 percent increase in calls for service
• Gateway Transit Center: 18 percent increase in calls for service
But not to whip anyone into a hysterical frenzy about crime rail”—altogether, crime has decreased on TriMet 35 percent since 2007, probably thanks to TriMet doubling the size of its transit police force and improving lighting at certain MAX stops. Currently, Gateway is the transit stop with the most reported crimes.
Just looking at which stop has the most reported crimes is not a good way to analyse tri-mets data. Gateway has more than 10000 boardings and deboardings on the max alone each weekday. Some bus stops have orders of magnitude fewer users so the fact that gateway has the most crime needs to be looked at in the context of that stop also being one of the busiest.
@econoline, I agree — Portland Afoot is working on a boarding-adjusted figure to update the statistics Sarah (kindly) links to.
I went to the Bullwinkle Fun Center in Wilsonville a couple weeks ago (SKEEBALL CHAMPION 4 LYFE) and noticed that in the parking lot, they were playing Michael Bolton loudly on the speakers. I think it works incredibly well as a deterrent for teenagers trying to look cool while smoking cigarettes and otherwise getting into trouble; I imagine it also works well on the MAX.
Though it may fail if you’ve got criminals looking for an operatic soundtrack to their crime sprees.
If they really want to test this theory, they should play the There Will Be Blood score on the Max and see if crime goes up. Or if people start drinking each other’s milkshakes.