Shootings, Assaults Down Across SEPTA, Authority Says

PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA, amid a major funding crisis, is still working to ensure safety on its modes of transit and is touting a reduction in crimes throughout the system.

According to SEPTA, incidents of crime in most categories held steady during the first quarter of 2025 – following the largest one-year drop in serious incidents ever recorded by the SEPTA Transit Police Department.

According to the new quarterly data released Thursday, SEPTA has seen reductions in shootings and aggravated assaults compared to the same period last year.

Total crime on the system is 28 percent lower than the three-year average preceding 2024.

"These results are proof that what we are doing is working," SEPTA Interim General Manager Scott A. Sauer said. "Safety is SEPTA’s highest value, and over the past three years, we have more than doubled spending on safety, security, and cleaning priorities – demonstrating our commitment to deliver the safest, cleanest, and most reliable service."

At the same time, SEPTA continues to hire record numbers of new police officers with 248 uniformed officers on staff, a 27 percent increase since the end of 2022 and the largest police force in over a decade. An additional 13 officers are expected to graduate from police academy this June.

SEPTA is also working to combat fare evasion through enhanced policing, as well as new technology and infrastructure. Increased enforcement of fare evasion has yielded broader customer safety benefits, with fare evasion citations leading to hundreds of arrests of individuals wanted for other crimes.

"With additional police officers, we can take a data driven approach to fare evasion – evaluating officer interactions, camera footage, and station revenue to determine hot spots for fare evasion, deploy police officers, and remove offenders from the system," SEPTA Transit Police Chief Charles Lawson said.

SEPTA is installing more full-height fare gates that are designed to prevent fare evaders from jumping over or crawling under turnstiles.

These gates proved to be an effective mechanism to deter, detect, and quantify fare evasion during a pilot at 69th Street Transit Center.

Because cleanliness is directly tied to safety and security, SEPTA has hired 100 additional staff in the past year, and SEPTA now has more than 700 cleaners and maintenance personnel deployed strategically to keep stations and vehicles cleaner and respond to issues as they arise. New initiatives like “pit crews” that perform mid-route cleaning of Broad Street and Market-Frankford line cars throughout the service day, and an emphasis on station deep cleaning, are starting to be reflected in improved scores in customer satisfaction surveys.