Light rail and crime

Via Ry, an insight into why Americans aren't fond of trains:

Do trains carry crime?

Some residents of Gloucester County worry that a proposed new light-rail line between Camden and Glassboro will bring an increase in crime to the small towns along the route.

In Burlington County, Sheriff Jean Stanfield seeks a $187,071 federal grant to combat gang crime along the River Line, the five-year-old light-rail line between Camden and Trenton. She also seeks some of the $13.4 million in federal stimulus funding that Gov. Corzine is allocating for antigang projects.

"I'm not saying the River Line is bad - it has done wonderful things for the towns - but trains can be a vehicle for criminal activity, just like highways," Stanfield said. "For trains and highways, the potential is there for them to be misused."

She said gang activity had increased along the River Line: Nine towns reported gang crime in 2007, compared with five in 2004. Stanfield wants the federal money to pay police overtime for 48 law enforcement operations over two years, boosting patrols on and along the rail line.

In her grant application, Stanfield cited local police reports of an assault and robbery, a drug deal and a gang fight, all connected to "perpetrators from Camden who used the light rail."

Now, I've characterized this kind of opposition to light rail as "racist," but I probably wasn't being entirely fair. People are afraid of criminals gaining easy access to their communities; the fact a disproportionate criminals in urban areas are black doesn't make that fear racist. White suburbanites would presumably be just as unhappy being burgled by white train-riders as black ones.

Still, there's a subtle undertone of race to the whole thing. Consider this quote from a crime-fearing suburbanite:

"More people are coming up here from Camden. Palmyra used to be so quiet. It seems like so much change. It scares me for it to be here. . . . You have these people walking the quiet neighborhoods."

Who are "these people"? How are they visually identified? By their ragged sleeveless T-shirts and their unwashed hair? Or by their skin color? And if "these people" are disturbing "quiet neighborhoods," does that mean that they are loud and raucous? Are they walking down suburban streets shouting and singing*? Or is "quiet" a codeword for "not containing many blacks"?

Then there's the fact that trains make a pretty bad getaway vehicle:

[D]ruggist Russ Beauchmin said the train's benefits outweighed the risks.

"We haven't had any problem with it," he said. "I think if somebody's going to commit a crime, the train's too slow."...

Riverside Police Chief Paul Tursi...noted that the River Line sometimes makes it easier to track down suspects who may try to get away by rail.

That may be why crime actually hasn't risen in the areas connected by the area's new train. So if trains don't really help criminals, what is it that suburbanites really fear? Could it be that the sight of groups of black teenage boys walking down the street is itself intimidating, even if those teenagers don't intend to burgle any houses?

It's easy for conservatives to dismiss suspicions like mine - "he's just another liberal looking for racism where it doesn't exist." But the fact is, if suburban fear of blacks does exist, it's almost never voiced out in the open, and therefore almost impossible to prove. And yet it is so obviously there, in such large quantities, that to refuse to acknowledge its existence is either willful head-in-the-sand ignorance or blatant dishonesty.

It seems obvious to me that this country will never have the rail systems it needs until nonblack people - don't ask me how - become less afraid of blacks walking their neighborhoods. Until then, countries like Japan and Europe and China who lack our peculiar racial situation will continue to lap us in the creation of economically viable cities.

* I actually do this.