Transit safety team needs more boots on ground: leader Transit team responds to more than 1,000 incidents in 4 months, has 5 positions open By: Malak Abas Posted: 4:20 PM CDT Tuesday, Jul. 9, 2024 Last Modified: 10:32 AM CDT Wednesday, Jul. 10, 2024 Updates

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The 21 members of the Community Safety Team that patrols Winnipeg Transit have intervened in more than 1,000 incidents since February that shows they’ve made a dent, but their leader says there’s a need for more feet on the street.

“I feel that they’re making a great impact and we’re getting great, warm feedback from the community,” said Bob Chrismas.

“I don’t think it could be rolling out better with the small number that we have, and I’m hoping that the city considers doubling up our strength sometime in the near future,” he said.

Data shows 782 of the 1,037 incidents reported from Feb. 20 to June 30 involved well-being checks, in which officers helped people who were in need or distress and were possibly intoxicated.

In 114 cases, officers got involved in a dispute or disturbance. There were 72 reports of officers taking part in community engagement activities; officers were dispatched 46 times to look for people who had been reported missing; and there were 23 assaults or situations where people had uttered threats.

The number of incidents doesn’t surprise Chrismas.

“Oftentimes they’re sent by our dispatch people to various disturbances and issues, but as soon as they walk out the door, they’re involved in things, because there’s so much going on downtown, on the buses,” he said Tuesday.

The plan was to divide the team in half and dispatch them at different times, but it hasn’t worked out that way. It quickly became apparent the team was being stretched too thinly, he said.

Now, the team operates as a single unit that’s deployed for five eight-hour shifts weekly.

Officers are deployed for a few weeks on day shifts and a few weeks in the evening, with hours and weekend shifts staggered to “try and hit the problem times that we’ve seen in data on transit-related incidents,” Chrismas said.

Staff includes 19 officers and two supervisors — down two officers from when the program first began.

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The job comes with a six-month “suitability period,” and both had come to the program through other municipal jobs and transferred back to their original positions.

The team has five positions open because a few more are expected to leave the program to take on work in law enforcement.

In future, Chrismas hopes officers will be able to go out for day and night shifts daily.

Mayor Scott Gillingham said the data will be used to inform a possible expansion.

“From all accounts I’ve heard, the community safety officer program is going very well and making a difference on our transit buses and around our transit stops,” he said Tuesday.

Riders taking buses around downtown Tuesday morning were split when asked about the value of the program.

A passenger waiting for a bus at Vaughan Street and Graham Avenue said she had seen officers intervene when a rider nodded off in the midst of a drug overdose.

“When they’re on the bus, I do feel a lot safer,” she said. “I do see them do some pretty good work while they’re present.”

Terry Wasik takes the bus everywhere. He said the officers are “just making appearances.”

“The characters taking the bus don’t pay for the bus ride in the first place. They don’t care. They still abuse people, they still swear at you, they still threaten you, even with the patrols,” he said. “We tell the operators, the operators just ignore us.”

Esther Godfrey, a senior who regularly takes the bus, including to the grocery store, said she’d only seen community safety officers on buses twice since February.

“I wish there were more,” she said.

“I wish there were more.”–Esther Godfrey

Godfrey said she avoids bus stops she knows to be especially unsafe and has been harassed while on the bus in the past.

She’s taken it upon herself to pick up naloxone and keep it with her because she has seen multiple people in distress while on the bus or at stops.

“I’ve seen people shoot up, and then I go for an appointment. I come back, and I see them lying on the street,” she said.

Chrismas said Winnipeg police had to be called to respond to an assault about five times.

He said his team members do call police in some cases when people are under the influence or are dealing with a mental health crisis, but added police are not called “in many cases” if the person can be turned over to a responsible family member or are able to go on their way without further intervention.

— With files from Chris Kitching

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.