By Mary Spicer
Crawford Area Transportation Authority isn’t waiting for results of the investigation into the late-January disappearance of money from the fare boxes of five parked CATA buses.
Changes already have been implemented to improve security.
Pennsylvania State Police reported that up to $1,000 in fare money was stolen from the buses, which were broken into during the weekend of Jan. 23 while parked at Simmons Auto on Cussewago Road in Vernon Township.
Each CATA vehicle is equipped with a locked, sealed vault, Executive Director Tim Geibel said Monday.
Staffing constraints make it impossible for CATA to collect and count the money from each bus on a daily basis, Geibel explained. However, until this point, weekly collection and counting had worked just fine. “I can’t find any indication in our records we’ve ever had a robbery of our box money,” he said. “I believe this is the first time in our history.”
As Geibel sees it, once is enough. “We have taken some measures to change procedures,” he said. “We’re trying to make sure that our money is safe — and that access to that money is strictly limited.”
According to Geibel, the incident was discovered when an employee came in for a regular shift and noticed that one of the vaults had been tampered with.
Internal changes in the way fare money is handled and beefing up security where the buses are stored between shifts are steps Geibel said he’s focusing on while he awaits results of the state police forensic investigation now under way. The investigating officer was not available for comment late Monday.
Mary Spicer can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at mspicer@meadvilletribune.com.
