Whipped Cream Difficulties

The “Blue Line” runs from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles. That’s about 22 miles. (The Houston METRORail is 7.5 miles long, just for comparison.)

With 22 accidents and six fatalities so far this year, officials say the Blue Line — one of the busiest light rails in the nation — is on pace to have more deaths in 2012 than any other year in its 22-year history — a considerable feat given the line’s checkered safety record of striking passing cars or pedestrians, or as a place where some go to commit suicide. Four of the fatalities this year were ruled suicides.

It would be nice to know what the accidents per mile traveled figure is, and how that compares to other systems. There’s no miles traveled figure in the LAT article. And finding information on METRORail crashes is nearly impossible these days; the transit authority doesn’t release that information, and the Houston-area bloggers who were maintaining counts have all moved on to other things.

In other news, the California city of Fullerton is considering shutting down the Fullerton PD and contracting out police services to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. You may remember the Fullerton PD from the beating death of Kelly Thomas (graphic image at that link):

Two officers have been charged in his death, the police chief has left, three officers quit the force in the face of termination proceedings and three of the five council members were recalled in a June election.

But folks say it isn’t about Kelly Thomas, it is about the money:

Fullerton Councilman Bruce Whitaker, a sharp critic of how the police handled the violent encounter with Thomas, said that although the department needs to be examined, the driving force behind potentially contracting out police services is the $37 million required to operate the 144-officer department.