2 Arrested as Transit Theft Probe Intensifies

Theft investigations have been expanded at the Southern California Rapid Transit District, where hundreds of thousands of dollars in bus parts are missing, Transit Police Chief James Burgess said Friday.

In another development, police said that two transit district employees have been arrested on suspicion of looting fare boxes.

Burgess said his investigators are working with the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and RTD’s inspector general in an ongoing probe of thousands of missing bus parts.

“We are not limiting the scope of the investigation to one guy and one bus,” Burgess said, referring to the arrest last week of an RTD bus driver whose private charter bus was allegedly outfitted with transit district parts. “We are trying to develop other information on how far-reaching this may be . . . to see how much networking there is . . . to use those parts.” Many of the parts in the RTD’s $20-million inventory can be used on other trucks and buses.

Divisions Targeted

Burgess disclosed that as an outgrowth of a recent investigation of $1.2 million in missing bus parts, transit police are zeroing in on suspiciously high use and loss of parts at certain RTD bus divisions.

“We are isolating those divisions that have the greatest number of missing parts,” he said. Investigators want to know “exactly why those divisions have such a high rate of missing parts (and) what at this time appears to be excessive usage of parts.”

One of the yards high on the list is Division 10 near downtown Los Angeles, Burgess said. That is the division where parts found last week on an RTD driver’s private bus were allegedly stolen. One of those under administrative review in the case, Franklin Jack, an RTD maintenance supervisor, had been a manager at Division 10 until recently.

In addition, Burgess disclosed that investigators are probing how 40 gallons of high-quality RTD bus paint, valued at more than $1,800, made its way from a Division 10 storeroom to a transit district mechanic’s home. A supervisor, thinking the paint was going to be thrown away, may have authorized employees to take it home rather than ship it to another division as was planned, Burgess said. But the paint is “very definitely usable,” he said.

Parts Allegedly Ordered Twice

One RTD warehouse employee told The Times there “supposedly have been excessive amounts of radiators, transmissions and engines” used at Division 10 and identical parts ordered twice for the same bus. But Burgess and other sources said it is not clear if the missing parts were pilfered, legitimately needed to keep buses running or mistakenly double-counted in RTD computers.

Managers had “stored” parts that could not be found in a phantom warehouse that existed only in RTD computers. After The Times revealed the existence of the phantom warehouse last month, it was learned from an RTD investigation that $191,000 worth of supplies were lost and had to be written off, another $425,000 in non-existent parts were mistakenly listed as being in the warehouse and $384,000 in parts remained unaccounted for.

RTD police, working with the new inspector general, Ernesto Fuentes, are evaluating the adequacy of controls in the transit agency’s highly touted, multimillion-dollar computerized parts-tracking system, Burgess said. “What we are looking at is, is the system we have in place as good as we think it is?” he said.

In another development, two RTD employees have been arrested in recent days on suspicion of stealing fare box money, an ongoing problem for an agency that handles more than $300,000 in cash, tickets and tokens each day.

No Estimate of Losses

While there is no estimate of annual losses, the fare box pilferage problems have been exacerbated by old equipment with poor security. Legal disputes and design problems have caused lengthy delays in RTD’s plans to replace the equipment.

The latest arrest came early Friday morning when an RTD bus service attendant was jailed on suspicion of grand theft and embezzling more than $400.

Shortly after leaving work at an RTD bus maintenance yard in Carson, where he had been assigned to empty fare boxes, Marshall J. Hunter Jr. of Los Angeles was stopped for speeding by Los Angeles police officers who said they noted “several large bulges” in his pockets.

After Hunter consented to a search, police said, they discovered $350 in $1 bills and more than $80 in coins scattered about his truck and in his pockets. Some of the money was stuffed in official “SCRTD” envelops, according to police reports.

RTD transit police, who are conducting ongoing investigations of fare box thefts, were alerted, and they arrested Hunter, who told police he had obtained some of the money at a gambling club on Normandie Avenue.

Hunter also said he had loaned his truck to an RTD bus driver earlier in the day and suspected stolen property may have been placed in the truck, police reports said. Police said the RTD could find no record of the driver named by Hunter.

“There’s a very strong suspicion he was involved in fare box thefts at that division,” Burgess said.

Hunter declined to answer a reporter’s questions Friday afternoon as he was released from jail on $1,000 bail.

Mechanic Arrested

In a separate case, RTD police last week arrested a bus mechanic at the El Monte division who was allegedly trying to make off with two entire fare box vaults. There have been 14 vaults reported missing from the El Monte division in recent months.

Manuel Rodriguez of Upland, a mechanic at the El Monte division, was arrested April 6 after he allegedly hid two fare cash boxes containing $229 in a bus, which he apparently was planning to take out of the facility for a test drive, RTD police said.

He also turned over a fare box key that had been reported stolen in January, just before a rash of fare box thefts began, according to RTD police reports.