LA: 'The concern is real' mayor says: Shreveport aims to improve safety for SporTran riders, drivers

The City of Shreveport is working out plans to improve bus system policing at the urging of federal partners.

After a recent visit from a federal transportation task force, Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux said his administration is trying to make police more responsive to bus system safety concerns. Though there are few cops available for new assignments, important grants are on the line.

At a meeting of the Shreveport City Council Public Safety Committee on April 13, Arceneaux said the American Public Transit Association along with Federal Transit Administration officials assessed the safety of the city's bus system and recommended strengthening security features.

"The concern is real and it is justified," Arceneaux said at the meeting.

The mayor said the matter would best be handled by the Shreveport Police Department because its officers are qualified to make arrests. But the initial idea to create a specific unit within SPD already has been tabled, largely because Shreveport has too few officers to spare for that.

"We received some very pointed, helpful and constructive comments from members of the council and from other people about that plan. We have paused that plan so that we can reevaluate what is the best way to approach this situation," he said. "We believe what we're looking at can be done with both on-duty and off-duty police and can be done within the revenues and expenses already allocated for this program."

Arceneaux said the plan, however it shakes out, will get a 90-day trial run. It then can be adjusted based on the results of that trial run.

Arceneaux said one of the needs the plan will seek to address is to have a 24/7 on-duty police presence at SporTran's main terminal.

"That's where the bus operators feel the need to be able to find somebody at any time," Arceneaux said at the meeting.

Though SPD lacks data on bus-specific incidents, Shreveport police spokesman Cpl. Chris Bordelon said riding SporTran is generally safe.

"They are monitored. We already have some security measures in place, but that's not to say that we can't improve what we're already doing," he said. "That's not to say they're without incident. Anytime you have a large number of individuals present, conflicts are going to arise."

Bordelon said the safety of a bus trip also is dependent on its ridership, a free service in Shreveport with a revolving cast of characters.

"It's not like going to the airport where you have TSA and people have to come through and they're screened so you know who they are," Bordelon said. "You don't know who's on these buses or if they're armed. So it does create some problematic areas we're looking to address."

Arceneaux told The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate the details of what would amount to a pilot program still are in the works.

"It'll be a deployment of officers for particular reasons, and we're currently working on where we might be able to use off-duty officers as well as on-duty officers to fill the slots that are necessary, and we'll have some actual experience over a 90-day period that will tell us if we hit the mark or we didn't hit the mark or we don't have enough people assigned and we need to go a different direction," Arceneaux said.

Arceneaux said implementing such a plan serves a purpose beyond simply safety: the federal grants SporTran relies on may depend on it.

"Addressing those (deficiencies) has some impact on our federal grants, which is basically how SporTran is funded," Arceneaux said.

© 2026 The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.
Visit www.theadvocate.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.