Transit Systems Security Officer Jeff Metz patrolled the Bayfront/E Street Trolley Station on Monday night, March 11, 2013. According to a Metropolitan Transit System email to board members sent Monday morning, MTS was assigning two armed security officers to the station in response to a shooting three nights prior. Officer Metz worked alone Monday night.
Universal Protection Service security officer Jeff Metz patrolled the Bayfront/E Street Trolley Station on Monday night, March 11, 2013. According to a Metropolitan Transit System email to board members sent Monday morning, Metropolitan was assigning two armed security officers to the station in response to the shooting three nights prior. Officer Metz worked alone Monday night. Photo | Brad Racino
The first bullet was like a car backfiring. Instincts kicked in after the second and third shots, and the officers dropped to the ground.
It was around 11:00 p.m. on Friday night in Chula Vista, in view of four buses and a trolley full of passengers, when at least three men opened fire on four armed officers at the Bayfront and E Street trolley station.
Officer Robert Austin took cover behind a truck when the shots rang out. He grabbed his radio and called it in. A ticket inspector yelled to the bus drivers and trolley conductors to keep passengers inside with the doors locked. Then Austin drew his gun.
Minutes before, the shooter, described by officers as Hispanic, in his 20s and driving a grey Oldsmobile, had confronted the fare-checking security guards on the trolley platform, and told them this was “his station, his neighborhood, and we shouldn’t be there,” according to Austin.
Austin and the other officers are security guards for Universal Protection Service — the nation’s fifth-largest private security company. Universal works under a $23 million contract with San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit System to provide armed guards who patrol, protect and arrest throughout the public agency’s 53 transit stations and on board a portion of the 160 trolleys that run between downtown San Diego and the Mexican border.
A recent inewsource investigation that included interviews with more than a dozen Universal guards found many of them unprepared for most emergency situations — such as an ‘active shooter’ or a bomb threat. The guards told inewsource they don’t receive essential training from their company — even though the training is highlighted as a major selling point in the company’s contracts with Metropolitan.
Metropolitan and the North County Transit District are among only a handful of locations in the country where the responsibility for guarding a mass transit system is contracted out to an armed, private security force — instead of a police force.
Last month, in response to the investigation, Metropolitan board members called for a review of Universal’s contracts.
Early Monday afternoon, they received an email about Friday night’s event, sent by Metropolitan’s Chief of Police William Burke. Four sentences summed up the details:
Austin, one of many officers with previous security, police or military experience throughout Universal, believes the details left out of the memo are significant for both the board and the public to know.
“I’m not calling anybody a liar,” he said about the incident report, “but maybe the reporting parties didn’t ask the right people, because that’s definitely not what happened.”
“They were shooting at us, they were aiming at us,” he said, “it happened on our property.”
Austin said crimes against transit officers are routinely swept aside and never discussed. When the issue is raised, he said, no one seems to want to go near it.
There is irony in the situation: Austin spoke before Metropolitan’s board on Nov. 10, 2011.
He talked about the dangerous working conditions, about the ever-present gang-bangers, about trouble on the Orange line, and about a lack of basic medical coverage.
Harry Mathis, the chairman of Metropolitan’s board, told Austin he was addressing the wrong forum. He said Austin’s subject matter was part of a labor dispute between a contractor and its employees. When Councilwoman and Metropolitan board member Marti Emerald stepped into the conversation to ask if more could be done to look into the matter, Mathis struck his gavel on the sounding block and declared the subject closed.
More than two years later, on Feb. 21, 2013, Mathis joined Metropolitan CEO Paul Jablonski in responding to the board’s calls for inquiries into Universal. Again, he said the whole matter was a labor dispute.
Universal employees acknowledge the strain between the company’s employees and its management, with stalled union talks compounding the tension. But money aside, Austin and his colleagues told inewsource, safety for both the passengers and the officers should come first.
Safety for officers who are routinely expected to deal with dangerous situations arising along the trolley lines, who ride alone and at night along the southernmost portion of the nation’s second-busiest rail corridor. Officers who carry guns, make $10.50 an hour, and lack basic (and required) CPR and first-aid certification, along with basic health vaccinations which resulted in a $20,270 fine levied by California’s Division of Occupational Health and Safety in 2012. (story continues below graphic)
The shooting Friday night marked Austin’s fourth violent altercation since the start of 2013.
“Can’t wait for summertime,” he said.
Although at least four shots were fired, no one was hit Friday night. The shooter and passengers made it out of sight before any of the officers could “get a clean shot.”
Guards told inewsource they’re even hesitant to fire their own weapons in self-defense, as it usually results in termination.
“It’s like an unwritten rule for us,” Austin said, “…they’d find a way to fire us.”
Despite the dozens of witnesses, the incident never made San Diego’s newspaper, radio or TV broadcasts. The surveillance camera photos taken Friday night at the station are, according to Austin, “horrible.”
“The guys that were shooting at us looked like three or four shadows,” he said.
The shooters have yet to be found. The Chula Vista Police Department is handling the case, but as of Wednesday, March 13, they had no suspects in custody.
Metropolitan’s email Monday stated that in response to the officer who “reported hearing shots fired,” the agency “has increased the number of personnel working in the area, including temporarily assigning two armed security officers to the Bayfront /E Street station platform.”
At 8:30 p.m. Monday night in Chula Vista, just seven hours after Metropolitan’s email was sent, one Universal officer patrolled the Bayfront station alone.
“If they want us to continue to do a good job,” Austin said about Universal, “they’ve got to make sure that we’re around and breathing to keep doing that good job.”
Austin is frustrated with the situation, and believes that even if he was shot Friday night, nothing would change within the private security company or with Metropolitan’s hands-off practice toward its contractor.
“Nobody is asking for a big paycheck,” he said, “we’re just asking for maybe a partner or two, maybe some better equipment, maybe cameras that actually work…”
“They charge us with the safety of the passengers,” Austin said, “the safety of the employees — but who’s in charge of our safety?”
Neither Metropolitan or its board members responded to inewsource requests for interviews on Wednesday.
An interactive explainer of Universal, Metropolitan and other related players from the inewsource article, “Security Breach.”
Brad Racino is a multimedia reporter for inewsource. To contact him with tips, suggestions or corrections, email bradracino@inewsource.org or call (619) 594-3569.
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Gender Identity
Gender Identity
Gender Identity
Women
80%
Women
82%
Women
75%
Men
20%
Men
18%
Men
25%
Sexual Orientation
Sexual Orientation
Sexual Orientation
Straight
87%
Straight
82%
Straight
100%
LGBTQ-identifying
7%
LGBTQ-identifying
7%
Not specified
7%
Not specified
7%
Speak a language beyond English at home
33%
Speak a language beyond English at home
18%
Speak a language beyond English at home
75%
Race/Ethnicity
Race/Ethnicity
Race/Ethnicity
White
67%
White
73%
White
50%
Hispanic or Latinx
20%
Two or more races
18%
Hispanic or Latinx
50%
Two or more races
13%
Hispanic or Latinx
9%
Age
Age
Age
20-29
40%
20-29
45%
20-29
25%
30-39
47%
30-39
45%
30-39
50%
60 or older
13%
60 or older
9%
60 or older
25%
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Lorie Hearn is the chief executive officer, editor and founder of inewsource. She founded inewsource in the summer of 2009, following a successful reporting and editing career in newspapers. She retired from The San Diego Union-Tribune, where she had been a reporter, Metro Editor and finally the senior editor for Metro and Watchdog Journalism. In addition to department oversight, Hearn personally managed a four-person watchdog team, composed of two data specialists and two investigative reporters. Hearn was a Nieman Foundation fellow at Harvard University in 1994-95. She focused on juvenile justice and drug control policy, a natural course to follow her years as a courts and legal affairs reporter at the San Diego Union and then the Union-Tribune.
Hearn became Metro Editor in 1999 and oversaw regional and city news coverage, which included the city of San Diego’s financial debacle and near bankruptcy. Reporters and editors on Metro during her tenure were part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories that exposed Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham and led to his imprisonment.
Hearn began her journalism career as a reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times, a small daily outside of Philadelphia, shortly after graduating from the University of Delaware. During the decades following, she moved through countless beats at five newspapers on both coasts.
High-profile coverage included the historic state Supreme Court election in 1986, when three sitting justices were ousted from the bench, and the 1992 execution of Robert Alton Harris. That gas chamber execution was the first time the death penalty was carried out in California in 25 years.
In her nine years as Metro Editor at the Union-Tribune, Hearn made watchdog reporting a priority. Her reporters produced award-winning investigations covering large and small local governments. The depth and breadth of their public service work was most evident in coverage of the wildfires of 2003 and then 2007, when more than half a million people were evacuated from their homes.
Laura Wingard is the managing editor at inewsource. She has been an editor in San Diego since 2002, working at The San Diego Union-Tribune, KPBS and now inewsource. At the Union-Tribune, she served in a variety of roles including as enterprise editor, government editor, public safety and legal affairs editor, and metro editor. She directed the newspaper’s award-winning coverage of the October 2007 wildfires and the 2010 disappearance of Poway teenager Chelsea King. She also oversaw reporting on San Diego’s pension crisis.
For two years, Wingard was news and digital editor at KPBS, overseeing a team of four multimedia reporters and two web producers. She also was the KPBS liaison with inewsource and collaborated with inewsource chief executive officer and editor Lorie Hearn on investigative work by both news organizations.
Wingard also worked at the Las Vegas Review-Journal as the city editor and as an award-winning reporter covering the environment and politics. She also was the assistant managing editor for metro at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside. She earned her bachelor’s degree at California State University, Fullerton, with a double major in communications/journalism and political science.
Brad Racino is the assistant editor and a senior reporter at inewsource. He has produced investigations for print, radio and TV on topics including political corruption, transportation, health, maritime, education and nonprofits.
His cross-platform reporting for inewsource has earned more than 50 awards since 2012, including back-to-back national medals from Investigative Reporters and Editors, two national Edward R. Murrow awards, a Meyer “Mike” Berger award from New York City’s Columbia Journalism School, the Sol Price Award for Responsible Journalism, San Diego SPJ’s First Amendment Award, and a national Emmy nomination.
In 2017, Racino was selected by the Institute for Nonprofit News as one of 10 “Emerging Leaders” in U.S. nonprofit journalism.
Racino has worked as a reporter and database analyst for News21; as a photographer, videographer and reporter for the Columbia Missourian; as a project coordinator for the National Freedom of Information Coalition and as a videographer and editor for Verizon Fios1 TV in New York. He received his master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 2012.
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Brad Racino is the assistant editor and senior investigative reporter at inewsource. He's a big fan of transparency, whistleblowers and government agencies forgetting to redact key information from FOIA requests.
Brad received his master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri...
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