Violent crime on the MBTA increased slightly in 2019, compared to the prior year, but the transit system continued to see the “lowest crime rate in history for four consecutive years," Transit Police Superintendent Richard Sullivan said Tuesday.
Sullivan released figures showing there were 779 homicides, rapes, aggravated assaults, larcenies and other so-called part-one crimes on the T last year, compared to 770 in 2018. The four-year average for 2016 through 2019 stands at 782, compared to 998 for the previous five years, he said in a phone interview.
Also on the list of part-one crimes are assault to rape, robbery, burglary, auto theft and arson, he said.
Sullivan said the numbers show that since he and Transit Police Chief Kenneth Green instituted a new patrol plan in 2016, “part-one crimes had a precipitous drop, and we’ve maintained that for the last four years."
Riders take more than 1.1 million trips on the T every weekday.
The violent crimes that saw increases last year compared to 2018 included homicides, which went from zero to three; rape and assault to rape, which went from zero incidents to one; robbery, which went from 90 to 99; aggravated assault, which increased from 150 to 157; and larceny, which went from 497 to 498. Burglary, auto theft and arson all saw decreases.
The 2019 homicides included the May death of a Boston College senior who jumped from a Roxbury parking garage near the T’s Ruggles Station after a lengthy campaign of alleged abuse by his girlfriend, who now faces a charge of involuntary manslaughter.
The other homicide victims were two young children who died in falls from the same garage during a murder-suicide on Christmas Day that also claimed the life of their mother.
Sullivan described those cases as “very alarming homicides” that originated on property not owned by the T. “I am by no means minimizing” those crimes, he said.
He also stressed that revised patrolling strategy, which took effect in 2016, has paid dividends. Prior plans, Sullivan said, “had a more municipal policing mindset,” whereas the plan he and Green developed is tailored to a transit system.
Sullivan said that the “principal reason crime is low is because of the men and women of the Transit Police who day in and day out police a vast underground city unto itself. They do so with dedication and commitment.”
He added, “With the amount of people who use the T, we think those [part-one crime] numbers are very laudable.”
In a related development, state officials are mulling a proposal from the Baker administration to lower fines for evading fares on the T. If approved by lawmakers, the new fare-evasion fines could start at $10 and progress up to $250. Currently, fines start at $100 and rise to $600 for repeat offenders.
Sullivan said Tuesday that he doesn’t think the changes, if enacted, would affect how his department monitors fare evasion, a process known as point-of-entry policing. Transit Police often put out news releases regarding patrons caught evading fares who have open warrants for more serious crimes.
Laura Crimaldi of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.