All Aboard the ‘Crime Train’ Narrative
Amid a spike of security fears about public transit, a venerable trope linking rail travel with criminality is again making headlines. How accurate is it?
Suburbanites are often convinced that rail transit is a conduit for urban crime.
Photographer: Carlin Stiehl for The Boston Globe via Getty Images
During his failed campaign in 2022 to secure the third district congressional seat in southwest Washington state, Republican candidate Joe Kent wanted to highlight his Democratic rival’s support for the proposed expansion of Portland’s light rail system north to Vancouver, Washington. To do so, his campaign posted an illustration of his opponent, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, driving a light rail train out of a downtown Portland full of flaming buildings, vandalized police cars and trash-strewn streets.
The train, the graphic explained, would be “bringing Portland’s crime, homelessness, and drugs” to Washington’s third district. Later, in an appearance on former Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s podcast, Kent dubbed the transit line “an antifa superhighway.”