BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto City Council on Monday (Feb. 23) will consider hiring security guards to watch the Caltrain tracks 24/7 in an effort to prevent teen suicides.
Orion Security would provide four security guards — one for each crossing in Palo Alto — plus two “rover” security guards to relieve them for breaks.
The one-year, $1.7 million contract with Orion Security would be split between the city and the Palo Alto Unified School District.
The security guards would replace volunteers who have been watching the tracks over the past several months, police Chief Andrew Binder said in a report for council.
“The individuals are intended to be a high visibility presence to observe and
report activity around their post,” Binder said.
The city has hired security guards for railroad crossings twice before — from January 2010 to June 2011 and from July 2016 to June 2018.
Council in 2018 voted to buy a $1.5 million electronic detection system that alerts police when people are on the tracks.
The detection system costs $300,000 per year, but the city won’t provide information about its performance.
Caltrain has recorded 54 deaths on the tracks since January 2022, including three Palo Alto students in the last year.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
No surprise PA’s stonewalling about the performance of the $1,500,000 detection system since no one ever figured out the logistics of what would happen if the system detected someone on the tracks, the logistics of notifying someone who could act on that info — forget about acting in a timely manner.
Also don’t forget that back in 2016, PA and its contractors never did security checks on the guards who were later found to be robbing neighboring houses and other on-duty abuses — and I mean that literally — that’s can’t be mentioned in this family newspaper.
Is there evidence of the security guards robbing Neighbourhood homes I wasn’t aware of this
Self abuse?
Can you provide a source about security guards robbing houses?
It wasn’t hard to find stories about this:
Here’s one that appeared March 15, 2026 on padailypost.com with the headline: Track Watch guard arrested for lewd conduct
By JEN NOWELL Daily Post Staff Writer
A guard who was hired to watch the train tracks in Palo Alto to prevent suicides was arrested yesterday after he was previously caught by an officer in his car behaving lewdly while on a break from work, according to police. …
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Here’s another story on March 5, 2016 — Ex-Track Watch guard could get 13 years
BY JEN NOWELL Daily Post Staff Writer
A former guard who was hired to watch the train tracks in Palo Alto to prevent suicides could get 13 years and eight months in prison after he was arrested for burglarizing three homes in the city, a prosecutor said yesterday.
James Chester Broughton, a 21-year-old transient, pleaded no contest Jan. 26 to two counts of residential burglary, one count of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury and petty theft, said Clarissa Hamilton, supervising deputy district attorney of the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. …
There were many more stories about these arrests in early 2016.
What happened to the guard masterbating in his car? Or the guard who drove 1 hour away to use a bathroom?
Why is it Palo Alto? Not Menlo Park, not RWC, not Mt. View, not Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Carlos, San Mateo? All of these cities have high schools within a few blocks of tracks. All of these cities have high achieving parents. All of the kids in those towns face the same pressures to succeed. It’s not because of the train, or access to it.
Why is the only question that matters. How is irrelevant.
Very interesting insight. Are the suicides largely from Paly (close) vs Gunn (far)?
A friend who’s lived in Palo Alto for decades and had school-age kids reminded us that there were so many suicides at the Alma and East Meadow RR crossing that a semi-permanent memorial was erected and stayed there for a long time until PA took it down.
Given that, I don’t understand the focus only on the Churchill crossing.
The soul sickness of Palo Alto will not be cured by these band-aid measures. I went to Gunn and wanted to kill myself so bad
Before they hire these Track Watch guards, they need to hire a second set of guards to make sure the Track Watchers don’t burglarize homes or commit sex crimes.