In addition, SEPTA officials are planning to examine ways to accelerate the installation of its Smart Stations project, which uses digital surveillance cameras, improved emergency lighting, expanded alarm systems and emergency telephones to make stations safer.
In 2005, SEPTA piloted the project at the Temple University subway station at Cecil B. Moore Avenue. That station remains the only one with the security hardware despite pledges from SEPTA in 2005 to expand the project to 21 more stations by 2007.
Also yesterday, Christian DiCicco, a member of SEPTA's board of directors, announced plans to work with other board members to hire 50 more transit officers.
"Our passengers must be safe and they must feel safe," DiCicco said in a statement.
But some questioned SEPTA's commitment to safety.
"This is too little too late, because somebody is dead. We were asking for this three years ago," said Veronica Joyner, founder of the Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School, at Broad and Hamilton streets.
Joyner said that over the last three years, her students have been assaulted 15 times underground between the Broad Street and Olney subway stations.
Helping to keep order at the Spring Garden Street subway station after school yesterday were Christopher Johnson, principal of Benjamin Franklin High School, and Charles Staniskis, principal of the Franklin Learning Center.
"Every day we are somewhere after school," said Staniskis. "You have to be," concurred Johnson. Both men kept a watchful eye, along with a SEPTA officer, as students from several schools packed subway cars.
Over the last two weeks, three brazen attacks have shaken the city and SEPTA riders. On March 26, Starbucks manager Sean Patrick Conroy, 36, died after being beaten by a group of teen males. Five suspects, all students at Simon Gratz High, have been charged with murder.
Last Wednesday, Tyesha Tazell, 24, lost a tooth while being attacked by a gang of teens and adults on a subway platform at 8th and Market streets, near the Gallery shopping mall. So far, five suspects - three young adults and two juveniles - have been arrested and charged with aggravated assault and related offenses.
And on Friday night, a man was jumped by three wig-wearing males near 15th and Market streets. The victim said the suspects were African-American men in their mid-20s to early-30s, a police spokesman said. Two were described as 5-foot-5 and 5-foot-8, with one about 150 pounds and the other 160 pounds. The third offender was about 6 feet tall and 175 pounds. *
