As King County Metro and Sound Transit work to make public transit safer for riders while they expand their reaches, KIRO 7 is investigating physical assaults on both passengers and employees.
King County Metro has focused on improving safety since the murder of bus driver Shawn Yim in December and several shootings on buses, some of them deadly, in the past few years.
But Sound Transit, too, has seen recent homicides: a 26-year-old man was shot and killed aboard a light rail train in February of 2024 and a 37-year-old man was fatally stabbed at a light rail station just months later in May.
Body camera video obtained by KIRO 7 shows a bus driver on the ground in White Center on October 23rd, 2024. He said a passenger hit him in the head with a metal footrest from a wheelchair.
“It makes me frustrated,” bus driver Jeremy Une said, watching the video with KIRO 7 reporter Linzi Sheldon. “I mean, why did my friend have to get attacked and assaulted?”
Une has been driving for King County Metro for nearly 24 years. Une said his friend called him when he got out of the hospital that night.
“He said, ‘I need to let you know that I am okay,’” Une said. “And, you know, I was touched that he would think of calling me right away to make sure that I knew that.”
KIRO 7 spoke with Une at the Tukwila office of ATU Local 587, the bus operators’ union, by a photo of bus driver Shawn Yim. Yim was killed on the job in December.
“Have you been physically assaulted on the job?” Sheldon asked Une.
“Yes, I have,” Une said.
“What happened?”
“Uh... which time?”
“How many times?”
“Half a dozen,” Une said.
KIRO 7 requested the numbers and found that assaults on drivers have gone down since 2023.
Data from Metro shows 34 assaults on bus operators in 2023, 15 in 2024, and 3 so far in 2025 in the months of January and February, with none in February.
But assaults on passengers are another story.
Data from Metro shows 31 assaults on passengers in 2023, 14 in 2024, and 7 so far in 2025 in the months of January and February.
Metro also tracks something called “passenger versus passenger physical disturbances.” These are described as “disagreements between passengers that are less serious in nature and/or a victim does not wish to pursue in the court system.”
In 2023, Metro recorded 431 of these physical disturbances. Data shows there were 463 in 2024 and 66 so far in 2025 in the first two months of the year.
“People might be concerned that it is more dangerous to ride buses right now. How do you respond to that?” Sheldon asked King County Metro Director of Communications and Marketing Sean Hawks.
“I understand those challenges,” Hawks said. “We’ve had some very tough issues.”
Hawks said some solutions will come from the regional safety task force, started in the wake of Yim’s death.
But, he added, Metro is already making changes.
“We’ve heard from our customers, we’ve heard from our employees,” he said. “They want a much more visible safety presence, and we’ve tried to deliver that.”
Metro said it’s hired more transit security officers, going from 175 to 220 as of May.
“You need to learn how to read body language,” King County Metro Transit Security Officer Charles Mosley said as he walked the streets of Pioneer Square on his shift.
Mosley explained to KIRO 7 that he tries to prevent any conflicts from escalating into violence.
“The toughest part is… communication in general,” he said. “It can be the hardest part of the job… You get used to rowdy people. You learn how to talk down rowdy people.”
Mosley said he’s learned how to read body language and form relationships with customers as well as the drivers.
“If you engage with… normal conversations, you know, just say, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’… It calms them down a lot more than people normally think,” he said. “Compared to me just standing there staring at them all day. It kind of creates a hostile environment.”
KIRO 7 wanted to find out how riders feel on board.
“Do you always feel safe?” reporter Linzi Sheldon asked Katie Wilson, co-founder of the Transit Riders Union.
Wilson is running for mayor. She’s also helped lead the union for 14 years since its inception.
Despite that general feeling of safety she cited, she admits there are incidents that are concerning.
“I certainly have encountered situations that felt, you know, a little bit unsafe and uncomfortable to me,” she said. “And often that’s someone who’s clearly having a mental health crisis.”
She cited homelessness and addiction as issues she’s seen people on transit dealing with as well.
“All of these deep societal problems are showing up on our transit system,” she said, citing the need for short-term and long-term solutions.
And when it comes to getting where they need to go, riders often take Metro and Sound Transit.
Data from Sound Transit shows worker physical assaults down this year in January and February compared to last year, with 44 in 2023, 163 in 2024, and 3 so far in January and February of 2025.
Data shows 249 assaults on passengers in 2023, 222 in 2024, and 38 so far in 2025 in January and February.
“You don’t want to see that, and you don’t want to experience that, and you shouldn’t experience that,” Sound Transit spokesperson John Gallagher said. “That’s why we’ve been, you know, really working hard to have more eyes and ears in the system.”
Gallagher said they started something called a FAST team in the past year. It’s made up of Sound Transit workers who de-escalate rising tensions and notify security if something’s happening.
“They get to an incident within about five minutes,” Gallagher said. “[That’s] their average response time.”
A new report shows the top six locations for assaults on Link light rail: Tukwila International Boulevard; Northgate; Angle Lake; Capitol Hill; International District/Chinatown; and the University District.
“A lot of those stations actually correspond to our busiest stations,” Gallagher said. He also said it has to do with stations that are at the end of the line or recently were at the end of the line.
To deal with growing volume as light rail extends its reach and welcomes back riders from the pandemic, the agency invested $250 million dollars a couple years ago.
Gallagher said by the end of last year, Sound Transit had 550 security officers. That’s more than twice the number at Metro.
Sound Transit also has 68 King County Sheriff’s deputies.
That’s about the same number of deputies at Metro, with 67. Metro is working to get to 89, which is the number of positions budgeted.
Metro is also installing stronger barricades that lock.
“How quickly can you get that done?” KIRO 7 reporter Linzi Sheldon asked.
“It’s going to take a couple of years,” Hawks said. “That’s why we’re moving as fast as we can to start, in partnership with our union, ATU. And we’re also trying to figure out how we can bring that timeline even shorter.”
Hawks said it’s the number one priority for Metro.
“The challenge in many cases is working with suppliers,” he said. “How do we get as many shields as we need and doors such that we can install them.”
“And so when you talk about trying to do that faster, what are some examples of solutions for that?” Sheldon asked.
“Working to try to figure out our other vendors that we can work with, that have a product that we have high confidence in?” he said. “Can we work in an existing vendor to provide more partitions to us on a quicker time frame? Can we increase our installation speed again? So we have total confidence in the product and the protection delivered that we can get those on buses sooner.”
Regarding the issues with mental health and safety that Wilson brought up, both Metro and Sound Transit also employ behavioral health specialists. Sound Transit said it has two teams. Metro said it plans to expand its behavioral health specialist program from the Burien Transit Center to the Aurora Village Transit Center and other locations sometime later this year, but the agency did not have a specific timeline.
Bus driver Jeremy Une just wants a sense of safety on the road.
“If we can start on enough things, get them started, that will carry us forward,” Une said. “But people will forget about Shawn. People will forget the dangers we face.”
Greg Woodfill, president of ATU 587, told KIRO 7, “Our frontline transit workers have worked through COVID, Fentanyl use, and increasing violence. Order and accountability must be restored on and around public transit for the safety of all. Our Union won’t rest until we see real improvements.”
If you have tip about safety on public transit, you can reach our Investigative Team at https://www.kiro7.com/news/investigates.
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