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Amtrak Police Detective Jim Martino. Amtrak officers have a unique role in public safety. Their expertise in passenger rail operations makes them a valuable resource to local law enforcement responders. Railroad Police make up the largest private police force in the country. Local and state police or other emergency responders do not often understand their role, but they fill a unique and vital role in the nation's transportation industry.

This article can be found on page 32 of the Nov/Dec 1998 issue of  9-1-1 Magazine.

The romantic clackitty-clack of steel wheels against steel rails is virtually inaudible in the quietude of the cab car. The locomotive that powers the train is some four cars behind us, pushing the train inexorably towards San Francisco Depot. This train is a push-pull type in which the locomotive pulls the train southbound from San Francisco to Gilroy, but pushes it back in the northbound direction instead of turning the train around. The engineer rides in a special control room in the forward end of the front double-decker commuter car. This cab car controls the train just as the driver's seat in the locomotive does. The engineer simply switches places at each end of the line.

A Joint Powers Board made up of representatives from three Bay Area Counties created CALTRAIN - more officially known as the Peninsula Commute Service - in 1992. When Southern Pacific Railroad decided to suspend its long-running commuter rail service between Gilroy and San Francisco, local authorities agreed to take on the responsibility, working initially with Caltrans (the California Department of Transportation - hence the CALTRAIN monogram). But Caltrans soon pulled out for the same reasons that SPRR did, so the Joint Powers Board therefore contracted with Amtrak to operate the line. Public safety and law enforcement along the railroad right-of-way was contracted to the Amtrak Police Department.

Railroad Police have a unique and interesting responsibility. Their jurisdiction consists of a narrow strip of geography that runs for hundreds or thousands of miles, accentuated by railroad station buildings, parking lots, freight yards. Railroad Police make up the largest private police force in the country. Their role is not often understood by local and state police or other emergency responders, but they fill a unique and vital role in the nation's transportation industry - and can be an invaluable service to local emergency responders, as I'm learning during my roll-along with CALTRAIN No. 504.

Railroad Police are commissioned peace officers within the states they work. During the course of duty, a railroad police officer's commission will roll over into adjoining states as necessary. In the case of Amtrak, where officers may transfer between states, they are commissioned in multiple states. They are responsible to protect the interests of their railroad and protect the passengers and cargo traveling upon that company's rails. Along the San Francisco Peninsula, Amtrak Police work closely with Union Pacific Police because trains from both corporations run on the same rails.

"We have the policing responsibilities for the whole railroad between San Francisco and Gilroy," says Detective Jim Martino. Martino has been with Amtrak PD for the last dozen years, assigned to divisions in Boston, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and the last five here on the Peninsula Commute Service. "We do all the train stations, the parking lots, and the mainline. Trespass abatement is one of our big goals right now, trying to reduce the number of people getting hit along the railroad tracks."

Amtrak Police officers go through a Basic Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, and attend ongoing training through local law enforcement continuing education courses. Investigators are sent to a Criminal Investigator's Course at FLETC for further training. Amtrak also provides railroad-specific training to local agencies. They'll provide a commuter train for a SWAT terrorism exercise, or work with a freight carrier to bring in a training tank car to demonstrate hazmat concerns for fire departments. A recent exercise in South San Francisco showed local firefighters how to open the polycarbonate Lexan windows on the commuter cars (Lexan won't break; access difficulties contributed to the death of 11 people trapped in a Maryland commuter train in 1996). They also show firefighters how to de-energize a locomotive - trains have a power source which remains constant at 480 volts even when the locomotive is not running, which could be substantially fatal to a responder working between cars.

Rails - and the land they lay on - are private property, owned by the railroad company, which makes trespassing on them a crime except at designated grade crossings which are considered part of the roadway that passes over them. The railroad companies allow other railroads to travel on their rails for specified fees. Thus, both CALTRAIN commuter trains and Amtrak's long-distance trains (what Martino calls "Big Amtrak") roll along UPRR (formerly SPRR before UP absorbed its former West Coast cousin) track in the Bay Area. UP police take care of Union Pacific freight trains, while Amtrak PD is responsible for passenger trains. Outside metropolitan areas, police from the railroad owning the track will handle any problems involving long-haul passenger trains. When staffing grows thin, though, each department will usually help the other one out. Corporate Rivalry generally doesn't extend to the security and safety elements of the railroad company.

There are about 35 stations between San Francisco and Gilroy, with at least 60 trains operating weekly which carry about 23,000 passengers every day. There are 10 Amtrak Police officers responsible for those trains and those passengers. They operate out of an administrative office in San Jose and a detective office in San Francisco. In the Peninsula Commuter Corridor, Amtrak PD handles between 150-200 calls a month.

"That could be anything from larceny aboard a train or a bicycle theft or auto burglary at a train station to a train/car accident," says Martino. "We'll get reports of homeless camps or kids partying near the tracks. It's a wide variety of calls just like city cops get, except our city is set out along the rails between San Francisco and Gilroy."

The trains are dispatched out of the central Amtrak dispatch center in Philadelphia, which processes calls for Amtrak PD nationally. Through a radio or pager network they relay the request to the local field offices, which then dispatches the local officer. "They have two or three dispatchers covering the whole nation, so they stay pretty busy," Martino says. Local public safety agencies usually deal with the local railroad field office (usually co-located at the local rail yard), for such things as stop train requests and local emergencies involving the railroad. They may notify the national dispatch center for other types of incidents.

Amtrak Police on the Peninsula route share the same radio channel with the train crews; they do not utilize a separate police frequency. Martino carries a Motorola Nextel radio, which doubles as radio and cell-phone, allowing him local and long-distance communication. His car is equipped with VHF and UHF radios to communicate with trains, local control towers, and surrounding police jurisdictions, including other railroad agencies like Union Pacific Police.

Our train groans to a stop several hundred feet short of a commuter stop. Another train is stopped there, on the southbound tracks. "No two trains can stop in a station at the same time," Martino explains. The engineers coordinate their movement to keep a smooth flow between north and southbound stops.

Nationwide, Amtrak employs some 400 police officers. They operate in train depots, station parking lots, and the railroad right-of-ways owned by or subcontracted operationally to Amtrak. Amtrak Police work closely with Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies who patrol the Metrolink, and they police sections of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority rail line in conjunction with MBTA Police. "Our busiest corridors are between Boston and Washington, and between New York and Washington," says Martino.

Amtrak police respond to reports of trespassers called in by train engineers, and do a great deal of proactive patrol along the right-of-way. If a pattern develops, such as at two Bay Area high schools located near the tracks that generate a lot of foot traffic across the rails, Amtrak PD has begun programs where offenders are returned to the school, which will handle discipline and notify the parents. "If we can, we'll bring the parent right out to the scene," Martino grins. "The parent comes out and sees first-hand these trains going by at 70 miles per hour, and they say to their kids, `You were out there playing chicken with these trains?!'"

Amtrak Police in New York City have a slightly different perspective. Most of their action comes from the depots, such as Penn Station in New York City, where 10 railroad police officers per shift make as many as 15 arrests a day, just in the depot. "We had big problems with pick-pockets, cab hustlers, phone-card thefts, and robberies" said Amtrak Detective Yasmine Samalya, who worked at Penn Station for four years before transferring to the sublime wildlands of the Bay Area. Street crime was such a problem for the officers at Penn Station that they built their own holding cell facility right in the depot.

As needed, special enforcement operations will be set up, such as a recent week-long surveillance that netted a chronic auto burglar at San Jose's Tamian Station parking lot. Amtrak has the authority and responsibility to handle most crimes that occur within railroad property, although major felonies such as a homicide on the tracks will bring in local investigators. "Local jurisdictions will be more capable of handling something like a homicide, and more than likely it's related to something that's happening within their jurisdiction anyway," Martino says.

More frequent are tragic accidents that happen, for the most part, through inattention and assumption. One such fatality occurred up the Peninsula in Millbrae, when a commuter was waiting on the platform with his luggage in front of him. Seeing a train approaching and expecting it to stop, he bent over to pick up his luggage - and was struck in the head by the express train as it roared past the platform without stopping. A bicyclist in nearby Burlingame made the same assumption: expecting an approaching train to stop, he pedaled around the crossing arms. It took the train a mile and a half to stop after it hit him.

"People need to pay attention around the trains," Martino cautions. "Most of these accidents are preventable. They do not have to happen."

This includes public safety personnel working on or near the tracks. Several fatalities have unfortunately involved public safety personnel. A train killed a detective in Brea, southern California, as he searched for an assault weapon on the train tracks. An officer in Boston met the same fate. "It's significant in both those cases that phone calls were not made to the railroad," Martino explains. "A simple phone call to let the railroad know, so they can stop trains or slow them down while officers investigate."

Because of the push-pull concept on the Peninsula Commuter Service, they don't always have the typical noise expected from a train. "When they're operating under cab car control, all your noise and your engine power is four, five, or six cars to the rear," Martino says. "A train doing 70 mph can be right on top of you without even hearing it come up on you. That's especially critical in an emergency situation where everyone's pumped up, they're on the tracks trying to find a suspect or pull fire hose or investigate something and they're not paying attention to noise, and suddenly this train sneaks up on them."

Many fatalities involve suicide, and most people who attempt suicide by jumping in front of a train are successful. "You're never going to stop suicides," says Martino. "A guy can be sitting in the bushes right now and decide to jump out in front of us."

Among the concerns of Amtrak PD - and the railroad - after such a pedestrian or auto impact, is to get the train moving again as soon as possible, in order to clear the line for the next train and to get the involved train back on its schedule. "We have a unique arrangement in Santa Clara County," Martino tells me in between blasts of the train horn as we pass over a street crossing. "The Coroner's office leaves it up to the local agency or the railroad police handling the investigation." As long as there's no evidence on the train itself and all necessary statements are taken, the train can be released and sent on its way. "One of the other reasons we like to get the train going again after a fatality is that the engineer and the crew just witnessed a horrible event," Martino says. "Once I get their basic story, I spray paint the tie at the point of impact, I spray paint a railroad tie at both ends of the train so I know where it stopped, and that train's gone." Train crews will make their formal report occurrence later, at the train's final stop. "I like to get the train out of there as quickly as I can, just for the crew's sanity," says Martino. "Get them out and away from the scene."

Train No. 504 slows through the big turn that rolls us into the San Francisco Depot. We bump to a stop, doors open to disgorge passengers like so much cargo spilling out the bottom of a gondola. End of the line.

The engineer toggles train control from the cab car to the locomotive at the train's back end, then trots down the spiral steel stairs and out of the car onto the walkway. I gingerly follow. He clambers up and into the lead engine, a hulking silver beast named "San Carlos," and climbs aboard. Gripping a dozen rungs straight up, I join him. Officially it's a G E F40PH diesel. 3,000 horsepower. It drones mightily, exuding a sense of power so great I feel it could harness the sun and drag it right across the tracks if it wanted to. We made do with a quarter dozen commuter cars instead.

The journey southward was uneventful, yet exhilarating from my rumbling vantage point within the F40PH. The standardized coding of horn blasts signified our process as we raged forward, pausing only to deposit and collect passengers some 35 times along the line. For engineer Earl Scarbrough, a 28-year veteran of the rails, it was another gauntlet of careless pedestrians and commuters scurrying far too close as we bore down on them, far faster than most of them anticipated. Traveling with me was a renewed appreciation for railroad safety, and the kinds of challenges that face railroad police officers like Jim Martino and Yasmine Samalya.

I'm also mindful of Martino's warning to insure that every dispatcher knows which railroads run through their area. "Make sure the Communications Center has the correct telephone numbers to call," he stresses - and call if any of our responders are working on or near the tracks. For Amtrak Police, their nationwide number is 800/331-0008.

Look, Listen and Live.