SEATTLE — 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 board 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 fatally stabbed at light rail station just months later in May.
KIRO 7 investigates the number of assaults on board and where many of them are happening on light rail.
“You need to learn how to read body language,” King County Metro Transit Security Officer Charles Mosley.
Walking the streets and riding for Metro, Mosley is trying 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.”
KIRO 7 went through video after video and found many that appear to show that in action.
One included a man yelling multiple times at a bus driver, swearing that he would not allow the worker to leave the bus.
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.
While data from Metro shows 31 assaults on passengers in 2024 and 14 in 2024, it also shows 7 so far in 2025 in the months of January and February.
And when it comes to getting where they need to go, riders often take Metro and Sound Transit.
So how do they compare?
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.
Assaults on passengers are on track look to be close to the same compared to last year, with 249 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.
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.
So what are Sound Transit and King County Metro doing to improve your safety while riding?
KIRO 7 investigates that part of the story Monday starting at 5:30 p.m.
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