On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 14:09:43 +0100, Wolfgang Schwanke
wrote:

Hello again,

during my last London trip I witnessed a group of police and LU staff
"guarding" the exits of the station. They caught one man just coming
out of the station when I was there, he seemed rather upset (I didn't
see how he got through the fare gates). Also inside the station I saw a
policeman taking down the ID of some passenger. My interpretation was
that they were on hunt for fare dodgers.

The part I don't understand is why they do this in the first place. I
thought the LU system is rather "fraud safe". You can't get in or out
of the system without some form of valid ticket (except by climbing
over the gates or taking a detour to a DLR station), so hunting down
fare dodgers should be pointless. What am I missing?

The event was in Archway BTW.

The LU system is not free of fraud. There are a number of things that
can happen [1] so a human presence to trap people is used. A further
tactic has been to use police (with sniffer dogs) as well because it can
be the case that people dodging fares may be in possession of weapons or
drugs or materials to graffiti the system.

On top of all of that we have the threat of attack to the system.

We have had a reasonable number of these checks at Walthamstow Central
and the police have been kept busy interviewing and detaining people. We
have also had the mobile metal detector / walk through scanner used too.

[1] I'm not publishing details of potential frauds on usenet.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!