The Brief

When 12-year-old Wilber “Wilpower” Urbina saw two kids breakdancing for the first time in MacArthur Park back in 1982, he knew he had to get involved.

“It was the coolest thing I had ever seen, but I didn't know what it was because I had never seen it before,” Urbina recalls. “The music sounded very strange, but interesting. From then on, I was just trying to copy the moves that the kids were doing.”

About a year later, Urbina heard from other kids about a new place across the street from MacArthur Park where kids could breakdance for hours for less than 75 cents.

It was called the Youth Break Center, Inc. or better known as Radiotron.

The first Radiotron graphic painted for the 1984 movie Breakin'

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Carmelo Alvarez

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Carmelo Alvarez

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A space for LA’s nascent hip-hop scene

Before Radiotron opened itself to neighborhood youth, it was an avant garde, underground space called Radio Club. In Jonathan Abrams’ The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop, rapper and actor Ice-T recalls Radio Club originally being a punk rock space where people would get on stage and practice their new work. Then the owner started bringing in hip-hop artists from the East Coast.

As New York City’s foundational hip-hop presence continued to develop, more people started experimenting with electro-music, funk and R&B as well as dance forms like popping and locking in Los Angeles. Radio Club became integral to that new movement in the city. It became a place for emerging artists to bring what they saw from the East Coast to the West.

LA Bazar Girl and DJ Antron were regulars at Radiotron

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Carmelo Alvarez

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Carmelo Alvarez

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At the same time, these culture innovators were mixing the East Coast style with the West Coast environment, aesthetics and attitudes, says Jonathan Calvillo, a sociology professor at Emory University, and author of the forthcoming book In The Time of Sky Rhyming: How Hip Hop Resonated In Brown Los Angeles.

Calvillo says when the owners brought in Ice-T as an emcee at Radio Club, it solidified the spot as a hip-hop space, and ushered in more people of color.

Before he was the original gangster rapper and before he became Detective Odafin Tutuola on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Ice-T appeared in early 1980s L.A. breakdancing films as an emcee and dancer — the documentary 'Breakin ‘n’ Enterin’ and the now classic movies Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, which were all set in Radio Club.

“Ice-T brought in more local street credibility,” Calvillo says.

Kurtis Blow and Kid Frost also visited Radio. DJ Chris “The Glove” Taylor, who frequently deejayed there, wrote about how Michael Jackson recruited some of his dancers for Thriller from Radio. It was a place where even celebrities like Madonna would go to check out the latest trends.

Then in 1983, Carmelo Alvarez, a young Mexican American dancer who had dreams of opening up a performance arts center in his childhood neighborhood of MacArthur Park, decided to rent out office space from the owner of the building Radio occupied. As Alvarez tells it, the owner then asked him to manage the building. It was his opportunity to create that performance space for kids.

Radiotron begins

Alvarez was raised in the MacArthur Park area where he was influenced by gangs. He recalls an art teacher pushing him to try out dancing at the Barnsdall Art Center and Junior Arts Center. There he met veteran artistic director and choreographer Chester Whitmore, who invited Alvarez to be in his tap troupe. He was also a part of the L.A. Inner City Cultural Center and toured with Lula Washington in a dance company.

He recalls seeing breakdancing in New York City in 1980 as a pivotal time for him. “Hip-hop is the vehicle,” Alvarez explains. “The main important thing was the youth.”

Carmelo Alvarez, founder of historic hip hop youth center Radiotron, holds a photo of Radiotron in its former space near Park View and 7th in MacArthur Park.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Alvarez says he originally had a whole other game plan for the youth center, but the kids had seen what was happening in Radio Club. The kids were itching to breakdance.

Radio was reborn into Radiotron in 1983 when the producers of Breakin’ approached Alvarez. They named the club in the movie “Radiotron'' and it stuck.

So did the art. The crew left behind the graffiti that was part of the film's set design. Alvarez thought it brought color and light to the space, so he kept it. “I said ‘no, no, no. Leave it alone’. Before that it was all dark and black,” Alvarez recalls.

Photograph caption dated July 5, 1985 reads, "Graffiti art decorates Radiotron's walls, adding to the atmosphere of this no-age-limit nightclub, where kids 6 on up can do their thing and prove their stuff till 3 in the morning."

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James Ruebsamen

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Herald Examiner Collection/ L.A. Public Library

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Tino Montelongo, then 18, of Fillmore's Radiotron Wizards break-dancing troupe dancing outside the Coliseum during the Olympics in the summer of 1984.

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Chris Gulker

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Herald Examiner Collection / L.A. Public Library

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A photo from June 1985 identifies the man spinning records at Radiotron as DJ Tony.

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James Ruebsamen

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Herald Examiner Collection / L.A. Public Library

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Then came the kids.

“So I get a knock on the door and it was a little kid and he said ‘Hey mister, can we break in there?’” Alvarez recalls. “And I said 'sure.’ And they said, ‘Hey! the man said we can break in there!’ And they called a bunch of kids together and they went in there and they started breakdancing.”

“It went from an after-hours nightclub to an after-school youth center,” Alvarez says.

Calvillo says when Radio Club did not agree to the conditions Carmelo requested, its managers moved the club to another location downtown.

A 'safe haven' 

When Radiotron opened, it quickly became viewed as a safe space for kids; a place where young people could fully express themselves and stay away from drugs and gangs.

“Radiotron presented an opportunity for young people to experiment and learn from folks who have been expressing themselves through the hip-hop elements,” Calvillo says. “For a whole generation, early West Coast innovators were being acculturated into hip-hop culture at Radiotron.”

Lifelong breakdancer Wilber “Wilpower” Urbina was one of them.

“All the kids wanted to go to this place,” Urbina recalls. “They knew that you could see some of the best kids, and when you see kids who are more advanced than you are, that makes you get better, you get inspired.”

Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina as a kid circa 1984 Los Angeles

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Courtesy of Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina

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Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina

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He recalls Alvarez being kind and welcoming to all kids who wanted to do graffiti and breakdance at the center.

“He was kind of like a father figure,” Urbina says. “ In barrios or hoods, most people just grew up with just a mom. To see and hear a kind person say good things, that’s great. He didn’t want anything in return. He wants you to do good, to stay away from trouble. To do art. In this place, you could do graffiti, it was really a safe haven.”

The rise of L.A. hip-hop

Many people know about the day that hip-hop supposedly jumped off. Two teen siblings from the South Bronx — DJ Kool Herc and Cindy Campbell — held a back-to-school party in their neighborhood in 1973 and Herc tried something new on the turntables, dropping what many historians say was the first hip-hop beat. But there were other elements that came to define hip-hop.

It wasn’t just the MCing or DJing or the graffiti — it was also the movement, the breakdancing. While young people in New York were b-boying and doing more street dances on the floor, in L.A. and other California cities, Black and brown kids were creating more funk-style dance moves that were placed in a larger umbrella category called “breakin’."

Even before hip-hop took off, California was the place where both popping and locking were created by young people in the 1970s. For example, a 20-something-year-old Soul Train dancer named Don Campbell created locking, an early street dance that influenced breakdance moves in L.A., back in the funk era.

In MacArthur Park, young people from all different background were getting in on it.

“At the time, MacArthur Park was not a particularly safe place to be. But it was a place that was experiencing a lot of growth, a lot of movement, a lot of migration,” Calvillo says. “A lot of the early practitioners that were learning hip-hop culture, and experimenting and adapting it to their surroundings, many of them were Central American.”

The end comes too quickly 

In Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, the dancers team up together to do a benefit show to save their endangered community center.

Calvillo says the fictional story isn’t far from the truth.

“Much of the plotline of that story was based on what was happening with Radiotron,” Calvillo says. “The youth center was going to be closed, it was being threatened in terms of its location."

Radiotron eventually closed in 1985 due in part to development. The building was torn down for the construction of the Park View Mall. According to news reports, the developers needed a parking lot — right where the Youth Break Center stood. Before that, Radiotron's weekend dances, which brought in revenue, were shut down for code violations. Doctors across the country started pointing out the dangers of breakdancing.

“Kids get hurt in football,” Alvarez says. “Kids get hurt playing on the playground. You don’t take the playground out. No, you go fix it. You tell them to be careful.” Alvarez and the Radiotron kids protested in front of City Hall to get the attention of city council members in order to keep the building but, Alvarez says, there was no luck. The building was lost. Radiotron was only in existence from 1983 to 1985.

Alvarez was heartbroken.

“I purposely had it underage, because the kids didn't have anything,” Alvarez says, reflecting on the importance of the youth center. “They were dancing in the street for money and they were getting tickets. And this is the era of crack and gangs and drive-bys. They needed something.”

Urbina said that after Radiotron closed there was nowhere else to go.

“Sometimes friends would invite us to go there to their lobby... but sometimes the lobby was small and it was carpet,” Urbina says. “So it was like ‘F---! We really miss Radiotron.’”

Alvarez says he’s opened a dozen youth centers since 1978, but it’s been hard to sustain them. The now 66-year-old Alvarez is retired and is working on a project called Community Action for Peace.

Radiotron’s lasting impact 

Alvarez says there’s one major aspect of the Radiotron story that shouldn’t be missed:: just like there were kids that held a back-to-school party that launched hip-hop culture in the South Bronx, young people were also important in the hip-hop movement in L.A.

“Those kids were innovators,” he says. “They were the ones that created it.”

Radiotron launched the careers of a long list of dancers and artists. Alvarez says some of the graffiti artists he shepherded at Radiotron have had work featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art and in LACMA. He points out artists like Prime (who is known to be the founding father of stylized L.A. graffiti lettering), Shandu One and Zender, who all made names for themselves.

Carmelo Alvarez walks near a mural painted by fromer Radiotron memebr RETNA near Park View and 7th in MacArthur Park.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Salvadoran American breakdancers like Urbina (aka Wilpower) and Cesar “Lil Cesar'' Rivas were a part of the trendsetting Air Force Crew, which was founded at Radiotron. After the youth center physically closed, Rivas helped Radiotron become a traveling dance competition. In the 1990s the Air Force Crew danced with Kurtis Blow, and became an inspiration for Korea’s b-boying scene.

“We don't often hear their stories in the same way as when folks talk about West Coast rappers because we think of the West Coast as mostly a movement of rappers,” Calvillo said. “But these are dancers that were actually going international.”

At 53, Urbina is still hungry for more. He wants to get the moves he had in his 20s and 30s. It’s hard work, but it’s fun. There’s just one caveat.

He’s not battling people anymore. He’s battling age.

Decades after Radiotron's closing, Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina, now in his 50s, still finds time to breakdance.

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Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina

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Wilber 'Wilpower' Urbina

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“You’re battling not getting injuries because breakdancing is very physical,” Urbina says. “Over 50, to be doing 20, 30, 40 headspins…it’s not so easy. I’m also a realist. There’s some moves where I’m like nah…my wrists aren’t the same any more.”

Practicing once a week is enough to keep him fit.

In June, Alvarez hosted a 40-year anniversary party for Radiotron. Urbina performed with the Air Force Crew.

“I want to battle myself to get better and get better in my last years,” Urbina says. “I want to go out hardcore.”

“It makes you feel like a kid again.”

Warmer weather is on the horizon as Southern California braces for heat next week. For this Fourth of July weekend, expect high temperatures back into the 80s and in the 90s for some areas.

Today will start off cloudy, then gradually become sunnier. We're expecting temperatures to reach the upper 60s to around 70 degrees at the beaches, up to the low to mid-70s for the inland coast.

For L.A. County valleys, temperatures will reach 75 to 82 degrees. Inland Orange County will see highs from 74 to 79 degrees while the Inland Empire will see temperatures from 80 to 88 degrees.

Over in Coachella Valley, high temperatures will reach 99 to 104 degrees.

Looking ahead to Independence Day, forecasters say the marine layer should thin out, meaning we'll see more sunshine. Areas like the Inland Empire, the San Fernando Valley and the Antelope Valley could see temperatures in the upper 80s to low 90s.

Coachella Valley could see a high of 106 degrees. Meanwhile coastal areas will see highs in the 70s and 80s.

Make sure to stay hydrated!

The Los Angeles Police Department has completed its investigation into the killing of Keith Porter Jr., 43, and presented its findings to the District Attorney’s Office, according to a statement from the District Attorney’s Office. Federal officials have said Brian Palacios, the off-duty ICE officer who shot and killed Porter on New Year’s Eve in L.A. was acting in self-defense.

Where things stand

In an emailed statement to LAist, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office said:

“The Los Angeles Police Department has presented this case to our office, and it is currently under review. Our experienced prosecutors will conduct a thorough analysis of all the facts and evidence to determine if we are able to prove a crime occurred beyond a reasonable doubt. Given the complexity of that process, it is difficult to predict a timeline for completion, and cases like this can take several months or more to resolve.”

What federal officials say

According to statements from federal officials, Palacios was off duty the night of the shooting. Federal officials and Palacios’ attorney have said he was acting in self-defense when he shot and killed Porter.

He was not named at the time. His identity became public through court record in an unrelated custody dispute.

In a statement released to the L.A. Times shortly after the shooting, Tricia McLaughlin, at the time a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said that Palacios had “bravely responded to an active shooter situation at his apartment complex” and was “forced to defensively use his weapon and exchanged gunfire with the shooter.”

Police said a rifle was recovered at the scene. Porter’s friends have said he was shooting a rifle into the air to celebrate the new year.

Why Porter’s family is pursuing a civil claim

Jamal Tooson, the attorney representing Porter's family, said he has witness testimony contradicting federal officials’ allegation that Porter and Palacios exchanged gunfire. He’s representing Porter’s family in a tort claim against the federal government.

The claim letter sent to the federal government says that Porter was “attempting to peacefully return to his residence” when he was killed. The letter claims Palacios did not personally observe Porter firing a weapon, and that he failed to use de-escalation tactics before opening fire. “The use of deadly force was unjustified, unreasonable and without legal cause,” the letter reads.

Tooson said he expects the federal government to reject the Porter family's tort claim. At which point, the family will pursue a civil claim, Tooson said.

Palacios on administrative duty

Authorities previously have said Palacios is still employed by ICE, and court records responding to the restraining order show he has recently been placed on administrative duty. ICE officials did not respond to questions about his current status.

Despite multiple efforts to put reforms on the November ballot, Los Angeles voters will not get to decide whether to roll back the city’s controversial “mansion tax” on apartment buildings.

The L.A. City Council voted 14-0 to shelve a proposed ballot measure on Wednesday, the final day to send proposals to the city’s voters in the upcoming general election.

The decision comes almost a week after a separate, statewide measure seeking to kill the tax — and other “mansion taxes” across California — was pulled from the November ballot.

Advocates for reform said the council is failing to confront declines in new housing development, which they blame on Measure ULA.

“The City Council unfortunately is still not living in reality with respect to what ULA has done to our apartment and commercial building market,” said Mott Smith, a USC adjunct professor of real estate and a board member of the Council of Infill Builders. “They're kind of living in denial.”

Supporters of the tax said keeping new exemptions for apartment developers off the ballot was the right decision.

Joe Donlin, director of the United to House L.A. coalition, said L.A. voters approved the tax in 2022 because they wanted to raise money for affordable housing and tenant aid programs.

“Voters should feel confident that what they passed is working,” Donlin said. “Of course there are big real estate interests who would prefer not to pay a real estate transfer tax. They're going to continue to try to convince the public that they should get a tax break.”

The measure that didn’t make it to the ballot

The City Council’s sidelined ballot measure would have asked L.A. voters to cancel the tax on new apartment buildings within the first 10 years of their construction.

Reform proponents with Mend It, Don’t End It — a coalition of business leaders, affordable housing developers and labor groups — said in a letter to the council ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, “If adopted by voters, these amendments would help build more housing and ensure Measure ULA is delivering on its promise to increase affordability and reduce homelessness.”

Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who proposed putting the 10-year exemption on the ballot, along with Councilmember Tim McOsker, chided her colleagues for letting the measure die.

“If we think the fight is over, we’re kidding ourselves,” Yaroslavsky said. “The pressure behind ULA reform is not going to go away, because the valid concerns from people who build housing are not going away. We will keep finding ourselves back here if we don’t show courage, get ahead of it and make a reform we and housing builders can live with.”

A recent analysis from the L.A. Housing Department concluded the 10-year exemption would have made only minimal changes to the city’s housing landscape. City housing officials estimated the exemption would have reduced Measure ULA revenue by about 5% while boosting new apartment development by about 5%, or around 330 units per year.

Why a ‘mansion tax’ applies to apartments

The council’s decision to keep changes off the ballot comes after years of heated debate about Measure ULA’s impact on the L.A. real estate market.

It’s known as the “mansion tax” because it applies to sales of single-family homes priced at $5.3 million or more. The tax rate starts at 4% and rises to 5.5% on properties selling for $10.6 million or more.

However, critics say the “mansion tax” moniker was always misleading, because it also applies to sales of industrial and commercial properties, including apartment buildings.

Supporters of the tax have long said they oppose sending the policy back to voters. They endorsed the decision of an earlier city council committee, which voted against putting changes on the ballot.

However, L.A. voters will see a separate, narrowly tailored “mansion tax” measure on the November ballot. The council voted 13-1 to ask voters to cancel the tax on Pacific Palisades homeowners who sell their properties within five years of the Palisades Fire.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Palisades, said exempting fire victims is the right thing to do.

“They’re not selling because they want to,” she said. “They’re selling because they have already lost everything and there’s nothing left. Putting this tax on these folks who are trying to recover and reckoning with the fact that some of them just aren’t coming home is unspeakably cruel.”

The fight is over for now, but maybe not for long

Since taking effect in April 2023, the tax has raised more than $1.2 billion for affordable housing construction and programs aimed at helping struggling tenants stay housed. Some of that money has been held up due to strict limits on how funding can be spent, as well as the L.A. City Attorney’s ongoing opposition to tenant aid funding plans.

Economists have published studies concluding the tax has driven down new housing development relative to other parts of L.A. County. A recent RAND study also found the tax has cut into revenue raised by other local property taxes and development fees, reducing funding for schools, parks and other government services by about $452 million.

Meanwhile, Measure ULA supporters dispute conclusions about the tax slowing down housing growth. They say hundreds of affordable apartments have already opened or begun construction, thousands more are set to be built or preserved, and tenants have received tens of millions of dollars in rent relief and income support.

Previous efforts to lower or eliminate the tax on new apartment buildings have all stalled. The most dramatic development came last week, when last-minute negotiations in the California legislature convinced an anti-tax group to pull a statewide November ballot measure that would have asked voters to kill Measure ULA and “mansion taxes” in other parts of the state.

That Sacramento deal did not include cuts to L.A.’s “mansion tax,” as many in the real estate industry were hoping to see. Instead, state lawmakers agreed to put a separate measure on the November ballot, Proposition 43, which will ask Californians to make it harder to pass new special taxes by increasing the voter approval threshold to two-thirds, up from a simple majority.

Close to 58% of L.A. voters approved Measure ULA in November 2022, when it first appeared on the ballot. Though efforts to eliminate or scale back the tax via the November ballot are now officially dead, Mott Smith said future ballot fights remain likely.

“Already, everybody is gearing up for the 2028 election,” Smith said. “We're going to be living with another two years of pain in the real estate market, and Los Angeles will continue to lag behind the rest of the country and the rest of the state in terms of housing production.”

For many Los Angeles college students, public transit is often the cheapest and sometimes the only way to get to campus as gas and other costs rise. But using buses and trains can come with a price beyond the fare.

Metro offers free passes for students at participating K-12 schools and community colleges, while some universities offer discounted transit passes for their students. However, college students who rely on transit have to leave for class hours early to avoid being late, weigh safety concerns, stretch already tight budgets and miss out on college life, students told CalMatters.

Late buses, early alarms

For some students, using transit means getting ready and leaving long before class starts. Makeda Webb wakes up at 6 a.m. in her apartment in Willowbrook, more than five hours before her first class at Cal State Dominguez Hills, less than 5 miles away in Carson.

On most mornings, the psychology major competes with her brother and grandfather, who has dementia, for their one shared bathroom. Even though her earliest class starts at 11:30 a.m., Webb leaves home by 8:30 a.m. because her commute usually takes 40 minutes and unreliable buses have made her late before. Some professors have even threatened to drop her from their classes if she kept arriving late, so she doesn't take any risks.

"The bus is constantly late or breaking down," Webb said. "You have to wait another hour for the next bus. … (It) makes me late for school, so I have to leave extremely early to make sure I'm on time."

She doesn't have a car, so despite delays, taking the bus is cheaper for her than paying for gas and other driving costs. Her university offers Metro U-Pass, which allows participating university students to take unlimited bus and train rides for the semester for a flat fee. For spring 2026, the pass cost $67.50.

Her commute gets worse at the end of the day. When Webb takes the bus in the evening after class and extracurriculars, frequent stops and unruly passengers stretch the trip to close to an hour.

"Even though I only live (half an hour) away by bus, it takes double that to get there because the bus driver has to stop the bus or … something stupid is going on, like chaos, which makes it take forever," Webb said.

Webb walks home at night after getting off the bus at a stop near her home. “It’s not always enjoyable, especially with the type of people that get on the bus. We have a lot of drug addicts, we have a lot of people who do crazy types of stuff on the bus,” she said.

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Martin Romero

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CalMatters

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For women, the train comes with risks 

Victoria Imo, a graduate student studying social work at the University of Southern California, has a car but often takes the Metro A Line, transferring to the E Line to get to campus. She uses her U-Pass to avoid the high cost of gas and parking.

Imo's U-Pass is covered by USC's mandatory transportation fee, which costs $146 for the spring semester. That is cheaper than filling her tank multiple times, which she said can cost up to $60 each time, or buying a parking permit, which can cost up to $585 per semester before added fees.

But saving money means she has to take extra precautions. Because of safety concerns on the train, Imo thinks carefully about where she sits, often near other women, and avoids using her iPad or laptop, opting to read instead. She wears a mask and sometimes headphones without music to avoid unwanted interactions.

In the past, Imo carried pepper spray and a Taser – the latter of which she previously set off to deter an unruly man who was "yelling behind me while I was walking up the stairs," she said. She activated the Taser so it crackled really loudly while she walked to her car.

Metro contracts with the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for law enforcement across its systems. The agency also has transit ambassadors to complement officers, report issues and connect passengers with resources. Still, Imo said she has not reported any safety concerns because she's so used to them.

"I haven't gone out of my way to give any feedback, because at this point, I feel like this is just what the train system is," Imo said. "It seems like everyone's used to it."

Imo walks down the stairs at the Sierra Madre Metro Station in Pasadena to catch a train to campus.

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Martin Romero

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CalMatters

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Gina Medrano, a psychology student at Santa Monica College, described similar concerns. She has her own car, but gas prices have pushed her to use her GoPass to take the train from the Atlantic Station in East Los Angeles to her school.

She carries pepper spray, avoids wearing headphones and switches train cars if anyone makes her feel uncomfortable. After witnessing a near-fatal incident, Medrano said boarding a Metro train makes her feel uneasy.

"This lady started hitting a man on the train," she said. "After she kicked the door of the train while it was running … she jumped out of the train … and it was right in front of me. I had to call my mom to come pick me up, because I just couldn't handle what I'd just seen."

Medrano said the incident was one of several disturbing things she's seen on the train. She regularly sees things that make her question her safety and wonder why there isn't more enforcement.

"It's kind of normal to see needles and unsightly things on the train," she said. "There's not really a lot of enforcement or safety. I don't really feel safe on it."

For some, police presence sets off alarms

Zak Nirenberg, an electrical construction and maintenance major at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, said their biggest safety concern is not other Metro riders, but Los Angeles Police Department officers.

"They're intimidating," Nirenberg said. "Most of the time they're on the (train), they're looking for someone to harass or actively harassing someone."

Zak Nirenberg rides the Metro train from Grand/LATTC Station in Los Angeles to Pico Station in downtown Los Angeles on April 30, 2026. They said their biggest safety concern is not other Metro riders but Los Angeles Police Department officers.

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Martin Romero

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CalMatters

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Norma Eisenman, a spokesperson for the LAPD, declined to comment on Nirenberg and others' concerns about officers' presence during fare inspections. The department directed CalMatters to file public records requests for documents about LAPD protocols.

Metro says safety is improving

Metro says it's making progress on safety, pointing to recent declines in violent crime and nonviolent offenses. The agency attributed those declines to increased visible uniformed personnel, fare enforcement and partnerships with behavioral health organizations on its transit system.

In a February Metro media release, Maya Pogoda, a spokesperson for the agency, wrote that violent crime fell 6.7% in 2025 from the year before. She added that crimes involving trespassing, narcotics and weapons decreased 33%.

Metro also announced the Department of Public Safety Dashboard, which publishes safety and security data submitted by law enforcement agencies and shows a more complicated history. According to the dashboard, after Metro resumed bus fare collection following a pandemic pause, trespassing reports, which include fare evasion, rose nearly 1,200%, from 126 in 2022 to 1,635 in 2023. In 2024, the number more than doubled to about 4,500.

Arrests also rose sharply, with LAPD and sheriff's department arrests increasing by 81% in 2023 to about 5,000, then nearly doubling to about 10,000 in 2024. Since 2020, the top two crime types reported on Metro have been trespassing and battery.

Pogoda wrote that the agency is trying to address safety through a mix of law enforcement and public services aimed at addressing homelessness, addiction and untreated mental illness. These efforts will all be coordinated through Metro’s new Department of Public Safety.

Los Angeles Police Department officers conduct fare inspections on a Metro train at Grand/LATTC Station in Los Angeles on April 30, 2026. According to Metro, officers conducted more than 116,000 train boardings and about 500,000 TAP card inspections in 2025 alone.

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Martin Romero

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CalMatters

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Student passes help, but gaps remain

Even Metro programs meant to make public transit more affordable for students don’t remove every cost barrier. For some, the upfront cost of even a discounted pass can still be out of reach.

Stephanie Verdugo, a sociology major at Cal State LA, lives in on-campus housing and relies on Metro buses to run errands and, previously, to get to work. She said her university sells a U-Pass to students for about $100 a semester, but even as a frequent transit rider, Verdugo said she couldn't afford the upfront cost.

"I always had a very tight budget … so I could never actually buy (the U-Pass)," she said. "I would just have to pay the regular way."

Still, even while paying Metro's regular $1.75 fare for bus or train rides, Verdugo said using public transit has saved her money. That is partly because the agency's fare-capping system limits how much regular fare riders can spend to no more than $5 each day and $18 each week before rides are free.

"I don't pay a lot of money considering how much I travel on the bus," Verdugo said. "As a person who was traveling every single day for a month straight, I only spent like a maximum of $80, which, to me, is really good."

For Nirenberg, the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College student, the GoPass saves them a lot of money on gas and parking.

"(It's) not just for school, but for life in general. I don't pay for parking anywhere," they said. "I don't have to worry about finding parking. It's fantastic."

‘I've never been to a college party’ — when transit derails social life

Beyond getting to class, transit can also shape how much of college life students get to experience. Julian Levy, a political science student at Occidental College, lives in on-campus housing and relies on public transit to visit his family and get around Los Angeles. Without a car, Levy said, participating in college life off campus means planning around transit schedules, deciding whether a trip is worth the time and often leaving early to get back on time.

"I remember just feeling so frustrated … just because I didn't have a car," Levy said. "I had to leave early from (a friend's birthday party) because of the time I would have to spend on the much slower public transit system."

One trip to an Occidental soccer game at Chapman University in Orange made Levy reconsider taking transit to away games. He had taken Metro and Metrolink to get there without any issues, but after the game, one of the few trains back was canceled. A second train eventually came, but only after Levy waited about two and a half hours on the platform. He ended up getting back to campus after midnight.

"I remember thinking after that, 'Do I really want to rely on public transit?'" Levy said. "I've always been able to get where I've needed to go, but I've definitely reconsidered whether something is worth the risk of getting stranded somewhere."

For many students CalMatters spoke to, public transit can be unpredictable, crowded and unsafe. Still, it remains the most affordable, and sometimes the only, way for students to reach campus and make attending college possible at all.

"I'm a low-income student, I've never been to a college party. … I don't have the money, I don't have the time," said Webb, the Cal State Dominguez Hills student. "I have not gotten the full (college experience), but I'm still thankful, though. At least there's an option."

Martin Romero is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.