At the Rockville station, for example, county police handled eight robberies and two aggravated assaults, and Transit Police reported just one aggravated assault.
At the Columbia Heights Station in Northwest Washington, D.C. police reported 14 robberies and one aggravated assault. Metro reported seven serious crimes.
Among the incidents not included in Metro's tally but recorded by local police:
On Christmas Day last year, a 31-year-old man was thrown to the ground at the Rockville stop by three attackers who took his wallet and fled into the station.
During a morning rush hour last November, a 66-year-old woman who had parked her car at the Landover Station was confronted by two thieves who grabbed her money and car keys, then drove off in her Toyota.
In January 2004, a 19-year-old man was stepping off a bus at the King Street Station when a mugger punched him in the face, demanded his wallet and wrestled him to the ground. Witnesses intervened, and police charged the attacker with assault.
Officials in charge of the nation's second-busiest subway system, behind New York's, have long placed a premium on its image as a safe, secure system, boasting about low crime rates as ridership has soared to record levels.
Few of the system's 730,000 daily riders fall victim to serious crime. Metrorail reported its crime rate last year as 6 crimes per 1 million trips. That figure was higher than the 1.72 for the Bay Area Rapid Transit rail system in San Francisco Bay and the 1.1 rate reported by New Jersey Transit. It was considerably lower than the rate at the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, which recorded 33.1 crimes per 1 million trips.
Metro transit officers are frequently assisted by police in the District and surrounding counties, often deciding at a crime scene which agency will take the lead role. When another department takes the lead, Metro does not record the crime in its statistics.
That's what happened after a shooting Jan. 15 adjacent to the Shady Grove Station. A 19-year-old man had just stepped off a bus when a car stopped behind him. A man jumped from the car, yelled in Spanish, fired several shots and drove off.
Metro Transit Police and Montgomery officers raced to the scene, where they found the victim bleeding from his upper body. He was taken to the hospital and survived.
A Metro transit officer was first on the scene, but county police assumed control of the investigation. The transit officer wrote a report for Metro, and Montgomery police also provided information to the rail agency. But the shooting was recorded only in county statistics.
