In the month after 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska was murdered on the Lynx Blue Line, the Charlotte Area Transit System has scrambled to have more private security on trains — both to keep people safe and to make sure passengers have bought a ticket.
WFAE reporters rode the light rail a dozen times in the past week and found security has indeed increased, with contractor Professional Security Services checking tickets nearly half of the time.
Passengers say security is better. But some Charlotte City Council members want even more, and are worried that the current security focus will wane after the negative headlines about the killing subside.
Interim CATS CEO Brent Cagle said earlier this month it’s not possible to have officers on every train. His goal: That people see fluorescent yellow-vested security contractors more than half the time.
“The goal is to have a visible presence so that people more often than not will see security or will have their tickets checked,” he said. “But the goal isn’t to check every ticket, every passenger ride, it’s just too big of a system.”
The man charged with killing Zarutska did not have a ticket. Before her murder, passengers had said security and fare inspectors were minimal on the Lynx.
Hallie Pister moved to NoDa five months ago and spoke at last week’s City Council meeting.
“While this attack was not an everyday occurrence, feeling unsafe on the Lynx is — especially for women such as myself,” she said. “In my short five months, I can’t count the number of times I have been sexually harassed by unhoused men on the train. Not to mention the various times I have watched unhoused people on the train screaming, throwing trash and having mental breakdowns.”
But today, CATS is making an effort to make people feel safer.
Mid-morning Tuesday, a northbound train stops at the Arrowood station. Two security personnel hop on. They begin asking the half-dozen passengers if they have paid and to show them a ticket.
“If they don’t have a ticket, what we do is we give them a ticket (citation),” one fare inspector said. “And we say, please get off.”
More security, but 'it's rough'
Frequent passengers, such as attorney Angelina Maletto, said they have noticed a difference.
“Up until this incident involving the murder, I never got checked for my pass, and I never saw security on the train,” she said. “In the past couple of weeks, I have noticed security on the trains and they are starting to check for tickets.”
She said checking tickets is a very hard job.
“I watched a security officer take a lot of crap from a rider who was making all these excuses for saying he has a pass, and he didn’t,” she said. “So I went up to him and said, Thank you for doing that because it’s rough.”
Daily rider Levi Tony said security was almost non-existent before the Aug. 22 murder.
“After the girl got stabbed, they seem to be there a little more, and now they have Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police riding every now and then,” he said.
Even before Zarutska’s murder, CATS had tripled the amount of money the transit system spends on security, up to $18 million annually since 2023. Much of that effort was focused on buses, and the main bus station uptown, where there have been at least three shootings in recent years.
Now the transit system is scrambling to protect its crown jewel, the Lynx.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is investigating CATS over its security before the killing. He has threatened to withhold money from the transit system.
In a letter to the Federal Transit Administration sent late last week, Cagle outlined the efforts the transit system has made. He said 24 CMPD officers are now patrolling the Lynx. And he said the transit system is trying to find a way to create a physical barrier on buses to protect drivers.
For the city, the Lynx murder not only threatens the November referendum on whether to increase the sales tax by one percentage point to pay for a multi-billion-dollar transportation plan. It could cause riders who have another option to leave CATS, whose ridership has already fallen by 45% over the last decade.
Charlotte City Council member Malcolm Graham wants CMPD to be the primary law enforcement agency on trains and buses — not a private firm. Council member Edwin Peacock agrees, and is worried that today’s security blitz may wane over time.
“It’s the integrity of the system that’s in question,” Peacock said. “If the trains are free, no one will value the system itself. And we have to protect that.”
But not everyone is on board. Some City Council members are cautioning that more mental health services are also needed, not just enforcement.
That sentiment was echoed by Shannon Binns of Sustain Charlotte, one of the biggest advocates of the transit tax.
In an email to City Council members this month, he wrote that his group has “tried to combat the narrative that this is somehow due to the lack of security on the light rail … or the frankly ridiculous idea that if we had more people checking tickets, this wouldn’t have happened. In fact, it may have led to the person asking for the ticket to be killed.”
