After-school sites for teenage mischief have long been convergence points, such as Fountain Plaza and University Station, where high schoolers from several buildings await public transport each day. Recent policies have worked toward discouraging fights at those locations.
But the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority’s data now point to a less-publicized trouble spot: the Metro Rail, which students might take anywhere from Church Street to University Heights. More than half of that route is underground.
“When you catch the subway, inherently you feel a slight sense of vulnerability,” said Brian Patterson, the NFTA’s chief of police. “You don’t have a lot of eyes down there.”
The rail system is a safety focus as the new school year begins. Complaints have ranged from high school students “experimenting with marijuana,” to vandalism and fighting. The leader of a community organization that runs a Safe Passage Program also acknowledged the issue.
As part of an ongoing effort to enhance safety, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority this week announced the launch of an improved version of its See Something, Say Something app.
“Last year it was just off the scales,” said James Giles, founder of the Buffalo Peacemakers, a program by Back to Basics Ministries. “That’s still a problem with our youth, thinking they can smoke marijuana in public spaces.”
An unofficial conglomerate of law enforcement entities, school employees and community organizations are all involved in ensuring students travel safely between the school doors and their next destination, whether that’s home, scholastic sports, other extracurricular activities or a place of employment. The group often emphasizes that only a small fraction of students start trouble.
Most teenagers ride the metro along with the general public and cause no problems, but it takes only one disturbance to affect the experience of a group and, in a larger sense, the perception of subway safety in general, Patterson added.
“Those complaints come in with some great regularity, and we don’t see that complaint in our other commuting spaces,” the NFTA chief said. Addressing specific problems, then, can improve the overall transit experience.
Giles said more Peacemakers have been asked to ride the subway between 2 and 6 p.m. each day. He said young people often heed their words – in this instance, that accountability applies to the subway, too – because they are not perceived as law enforcement.
“We’re letting them know this isn’t the place to congregate and set your little fights off,” Giles said.
Most Valuable Parents, an education and anti-violence nonprofit commonly referred to as MVP, has been running the MVP Neal Dobbins Inner City Basketball League since shortly after Executive Director Mia Ayers-Goss took over the organization following the 2021 death of Dobbins, its founder.
Patterson said the NFTA has bolstered its presence below ground. By restructuring schedules, Patterson increased the number of officers dedicated to the subway without requiring overtime. The four officers in his school resource unit, who build positive relationships with student riders as part of their role, have also been instructed to monitor potential issues.
Buffalo Public Schools has implemented “rail stickers” on student metro passes to clearly indicate who can access the subway. Patterson said, by evaluating routing data, the school district found only 10% of high school students required rail access to reach their destination.
“You just can’t travel anywhere you want,” Patterson said, “because we know getting a kid from the school doors to the home doors is so important in terms of maximizing safety outcomes for these kids.”
Is this the best way?
Local authorities say added restrictions have been successful in curbing misbehavior in the short term.
Buffalo Public Schools and the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority aim to curb fights along bus and Metro Rail subway routes after high schools let out by limiting routes home and adding an ID system to free rides after school. The move comes after several large fights last school year.
The most significant rollback of student transportation access came in 2023, when the NFTA and Buffalo Schools designated a specific route home for high school students and allotted two hours in which their transit passes could be used. Special exceptions could be made for students who worked, competed in athletics or needed to care for a family member, as long as those students requested and explained their reasons to school administrators.
Those rules stemmed from large, planned fights at places such as the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library downtown, Fountain Plaza or McKinley High School, which drew repeated warnings from former Buffalo Schools Superintendent Tonja M. Williams Knight.
Patterson, Giles and Aaron Young, chief of the Buffalo Police Department’s School Resource Unit, said passes with greater limitations have reduced the dense, troublesome gatherings, although not entirely.
“The day I solve that problem, you won’t need a police chief for the transportation system,” Patterson said. “How do you compete with upwards of 10,000 students?”
Hutch-Tech, Emerson School of Hospitality, Buffalo Culinary School 355 and Buffalo Academy of Science Charter School are all within a half-mile of the plaza, and the mingling of student populations and density of students have led to an increase in large fights after school.
Young said the policy’s aftermath has changed how after-school incidents look. He said a Buffalo police detail, assigned to the “school corridor” at Fountain Plaza, has been crucially effective.
Now, smaller disruptions are more common, he said, and they’re not in high-traffic downtown areas. Instead, they are usually in neighborhoods at bus stops close to high schools. East Delavan and Grider, near Math, Science, Technology (MST) high school, and Fillmore and Northampton, near East Community High School, are now “hot spots” school resource officers frequent.
“Students are crafty,” Young said.
Increasingly restrictive transit policies have created problems for students who avoid mischief, said Buffalo Parent-Teacher Organization co-chair Danielle Grzymala, whose parent group holds transportation forums multiple times each school year. Although transportation concerns have been quiet to begin this school year, she relayed parents’ concerns from the end of last school year how a loss of rail access meant significantly longer bus rides home.
For some families, a longer trip above ground was preferable to the environment below. For others, the longer commute meant students got home well after dark during the winter.
Elementary buses an hour late to pick up students three mornings in a row. Dozens of students waiting hours after school in cafeterias. NFTA buses too full to pick up high school students. School transportation leaders responded to these problems in a forum this week.
Grzymala urged revisiting restrictive policies and engaging groups across Buffalo schools to gauge their effectiveness. She said student and parent voices have not been considered for many high school transportation decisions.
“Before we make big, huge sweeping changes, conversations should happen,” Grzymala said. “Now, we should be looking at the impact and talking to students about the actual impact that the change has made.”
The parent-group leader said accountability is important for students who abuse metro privileges, but she’s in favor of a less restrictive approach.
“We’re trying to raise young adults,” she said, “but we continue treating them like children.”
Ben Tsujimoto can be reached at btsujimoto@buffnews.com, at (716) 849-6927 or on Twitter at @Tsuj10.
Want to see more like this?
Get our local education coverage delivered directly to your inbox.
* I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Ben Tsujimoto
Reporter
Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily!
Your notification has been saved.
There was a problem saving your notification.
{{description}}
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Followed notifications
Please log in to use this feature
Log In
Don’t have an account? Sign Up Today