Boots on the ground downtown

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This article was published 22/03/2024 (561 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As residents of the downtown began their day, two of the city’s new community safety officers are starting theirs at the city hall bus stop, where a young man appears to be nodding off inside the shack Friday morning.

The man is observed drifting in and out of consciousness, a serious side effect of a drug overdose. Officers are trained to administer naloxone and call paramedics in situations like these, but when they approach the man, he lifts his head and answers their questions.

He’s waiting for the No. 18 bus to get him to Cityplace, where he and a friend are going to get something for breakfast. Officers tell him to stay safe.

“We’ll circle back in a bit to make sure you got on your bus,” one officer says before they walk back to their car.

The safety officers aren’t always this kind, the man tells the Free Press, after they leave.

“A week ago, I (bussed to) the hospital because of frostbite on my fingers, and one of the safety officers … actually physically pushed a bus rider off the bus,” the man says.

He shrugs.

“They’re like cops, you know? Some are great, some are ass——-.”

The officers don’t have to circle back. A few minutes later, an 18 bus arrives and the man is gone.

Winnipeg’s community safety officers took to the streets for the first time late last month. Beginning at 7 a.m. Friday morning, the Free Press got a brief on-the-job look from community safety officer supervisor Sean Berman.

“Usually, first thing in the morning, if we’re working a day shift, we’ll try to just patrol the downtown to check on people that might be camped out in bus shelters, that sort of thing,” said Berman, who joined Winnipeg Transit in 2009 and was an inspector for the last decade.

“And then later in the day, when we’ve got a handle on that, we’ll kind of spread out a little further and see some other areas of the city and ride some buses.”

A communications hub manned by two safety officers receives incident reports from the Winnipeg Transit control centre, which are relayed to officers on the street. At times, they’ll be dispatched to a bus stop or shack. There are some repeat offenders: Berman listed the Portage Place bus stop, Portage and Main and Main and Pioneer as spots where officers are regularly called to.

What stops officers visit and what buses they take isn’t shared publicly for safety reasons, but is informed by data provided by Winnipeg Transit over the past two years that maps out incidents on buses or at bus stops.

“If we’re supposed to be cleaning up transit, then it only makes sense to focus on what’s causing an issue,” Berman said.

Berman said most officers get called to between five and 10 incidents a day (outside of what they might encounter on patrol) with most calls being about people passed out on buses or in bus shelters, or people acting unruly on the bus. On average, he guesses each officer is faced with one incident of violence a day.

Checking on people can range from ensuring they’re awake to referring them to a shelter or calling the police. Friday morning has been quiet work for Berman — and he hopes the quiet days are due in part to the safety team’s presence.

“To be honest, in the last week, we’ve noticed a drastic change in what’s been going on in the mornings. On Monday, myself and another officer drove up and down Portage from Main to Polo Park, Main Street from Broadway to Selkirk, all of Graham, and we literally could not find a single person (in need) in a bus shelter,” he said.

“So I think we’ve been doing a pretty good job of trying to connect people with resources and getting them to safer, warmer places.”

That will likely change as the weather warms. Historically, Winnipeg community agencies have seen a spike in drug use and overdoses as the weather gets hotter and people are more likely to get together.

“Drug use isn’t ever going to go away, so when the weather gets warm, we’re probably going to see more of that in the bus shelters,” he said. “We’ll have to do some work and some of our own research and find out some of the spots where that’s taking place more often than not and try to focus on those areas.”

Berman said officers are expecting schedule changes that could see them on the streets until just past midnight — the end of regular Transit service.

A month into the program, there’s a feeling of having to prove their worth, Berman said. He’s hoping the proof will be obvious as the months pass by as meetings with community support organizations continue and the public sees them on the job.

“People see taxpayer dollars being spent on new city employees, and naturally, I think they’re a little bit skeptical. But I think we’ve been able to be effective and prove ourselves enough that we’ve kind of taken the skepticism out of it for them.”

Earlier this week, Bob Crismas, leader of the community safety team, told reporters officers had saved at least two lives so far.

Several weeks after the community safety team was launched, the Free Press spent a day on buses at and around Portage Place. Transit safety officers were observed arriving in the area around 4 p.m., when two helped paramedics block off the road after a car accident nearby. After the road re-opened, officers boarded a bus at Portage Place.

At one point, Crismas had planned to split the 22 staff and have one half cover mornings and the other evenings, but it quickly became clear they would be spread too thin. It’s difficult to be everywhere all the time, he said.

“That’s the problem with a small team,” Crismas said Friday. “We’re picking our battles, and giving them a different mission each day.”

Staff brief every morning and debrief at the end of each day, Crismas said, to share experiences and how best to deal with a range of incidents.

“I just came from 34 years in policing, and you’d always speculate about when the crime and disturbances are going to spike, and people have attributed it to everything from a full moon to when GST cheques come out, or the time of the week,” he said.

“It’s really hard to predict when incidents are going to happen.”

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.

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