RTD police said one workflow change from officers increased safety on public transit

DENVER - A simple change in strategy for Denver's Regional Transportation District, appears to be working.

After years of growing complaints about safety and security on public trains and buses, RTD data shows criminal incident reports have been trending downward, at their lowest point in July.

RTD publishes much of their statistics online. The following is data from 2025 so far.

RTD

Denver7 has been tracking safety issues on RTD for years.

In 2023, Denver7 Investigates went undercover to see the scope of the problem and found people doing drugs in plain sight. Regular riders told us, they saw drug use daily.

In the summer of 2025, riders may now notice a few more people on board light rail trains.

"A lot of security officers and police officers were on more static posts, they were just at a location, but they weren't getting on our vehicles, they weren't riding the trains back and forth, they weren't getting on the busses," said RTD Transit Police Chief Steven Martingano.

Before he was sworn in as Chief, he served as Acting Chief in 2024. He says he made a big change right away.

"We had asked them to start getting on the vehicles, checking fare," he said.

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Ticket checks increased by 500% since 2024, and RTD said safety improved too.

"With the officers being on the trains, they're highly visible, right? So they can interject if there's any incidents happening," he said.

RTD reports security related calls into RTD Police are down about 33% and reports of illegal drug use are down between 50-70% depending on the month compared to last year.

"Since this was so effective, why do you think this wasn't done before?" asked Denver7 reporter Danielle Kreutter.

"I can't explain why decisions were made before," Martingano responded, "I took over as acting police in July. When I met with our teams, our security teams, as well as our police officer teams, I was trying to understand their direction. A lot of that was the static post- not really being on our vehicles. So then that's when I made the immediate change. You could kind of see the 13 month decline from really last July to this August, every month, we continue to decrease, and I think a lot of that's just a high visibility."

The chief acknowledges there's more work to be done.

"We don't want to just make one plan and hope that works every single time," he said.

The department is expected to have another 120-130 officers by the end of the year. Martingano also mentioned the recent completion of the evidence room at the police department which will reduce their reliance on other law enforcement agencies.

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