Transit safety officers assaulted

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This article was published 12/03/2024 (569 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two Winnipeg Transit safety officers were assaulted on Main Street on Monday afternoon.

The safety officers, who were on Main near Graham Avenue, called for Winnipeg Police Service patrol officers at about 4:45 p.m., police said Tuesday.

Police found the safety team holding an “erratic” man in custody and arrested him.

Police learned the safety team had been sent to get the man off a bus near Main and Graham. He walked into traffic after they got him off the bus, police said.

The safety officers approached the man again, but the suspect elbowed one of them in the head and tried to bite the other before the officers got him into custody, WPS spokesman Const. Claude Chancy said. Neither was badly hurt.

Chancy said the man was “yelling and shouting quite a bit” during the incident but did not have further details of what prompted the call to the bus safety team.

The safety team began patrolling some bus routes in February after a 2022 election pledge by Mayor Scott Gillingham to create the program to address concerns about violence on and near buses. Twenty-one of the officers have been hired, trained and sent out on the streets.

Clad in fluorescent yellow and black uniforms, the officers are equipped with soft body armour, slash-resistant gloves, safety boots, handcuffs, collapsible batons, first-aid equipment and opioid antidotes.

A City of Winnipeg spokesperson directed Free Press questions for the head of the new safety team to police.

The Winnipeg Police Association, the union that represents city police, argued in a still-to-be-decided grievance in January that the security team would be arresting and detaining people, violating the collective agreement it has with the city.

Tatipsa Anikeka Fontaine, 29, was charged with two counts of assaulting a peace officer for Monday’s incident and on a warrant for failing to attend court. He was held in custody. Fontaine’s criminal record dates back to 2017 and features an array of petty crimes, including theft, mischief, assault and numerous probation violations.

His most significant conviction resulted in a sentence of 30 days in custody after he pleaded guilty to assault and theft under $5,000 in September 2021. He pleaded guilty to a separate charge of assault against a peace officer in February 2020 and served one day in custody, court records show.

Most recently, he pleaded guilty to theft under $5,000 in December 2022 and was given a one-day court appearance as his sentence.

Monday’s incident was the third time this month someone has bitten or tried to bite a peace officer in Manitoba. A woman was arrested for biting a Brandon Police Service officer Saturday, and a man was arrested for such an incident involving Winnipeg police on the 300 block of Kennedy Street on March 2.

— With files from Tyler Searle

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca