This is Daquan Rogers. He is a 27-year-old Minneapolis light-rail rider who has a history of transit crimes including being arrested last month for brawling aboard a light-rail train. Following the arrest he was released pending his court case.
On May 20, while standing on a light-rail platform, he got into an argument with 41-year-old Eugene Snelling. A horrific video shows Rogers pushing Snelling on to the tracks between two light-rail cars. Snelling died and Rogers was arrested in what was considered to be a homocide case.
This is Mary Moriarty. She was a public defender until she was elected as Hennepin County Attorney in 2022.
On May 25, she decided to release Rogers without charge and now he is back on the streets and light-rail platforms. News reports are now saying that Snelling “fell” onto light-rail tracks even though the video clearly shows Rogers pushed him.
Light rail attracts more crime — an average of 121 crimes per billion passenger-miles in 2019 — than any other form of transit. Light-rail in Minneapolis-St. Paul attracts more crime than any light-rail system in the country: an average of 340 per billion passenger-miles in 2018, rising to almost 1,200 in 2019 and nearly 1,600 in 2020 and 2021. For some reason, the number of crimes more than tripled in 2019, but since then, it hasn’t risen: it’s just that the number of light-rail riders has declined, so crime rates increased.
So who is the face of public transit: Daquan Rogers or Mary Moriarty? If Metro Transit is ever to get light-rail ridership up again, it has to control crime. I can’t tell Moriarty how to do her job, but she isn’t helping Metro Transit when she releases people like Rogers without charges.
Worst part of this, Metro Transit could’ve prevented this had they bothered to install simple, cheap fencing at their stations.