Transit security no long-term fix

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/07/2023 (809 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Soon, Winnipeg Transit drivers and riders will hopefully travel a little easier.

After a long period of escalating violence on city buses, multiple levels of government are collaborating to provide legislation and funding to increase security. The city has earmarked $5 million in a preliminary 2023 budget to implement a security program and hire officers, and the province is working on amendments to police service law via Bill 34.

It’s been a long time coming. While the risk of encountering a violent or unruly passenger during a Transit trip is far from unprecedented, the situation has only deteriorated over time: Transit had reported a new record for assaults on drivers by early October last year (There were 138 in 2022) prompting the union representing Transit drivers to sound the alarm over the increased danger.

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 150 president Romeo Ignacio told the Free Press in November last year he believed the situation was “a crisis,” citing events in early November which included a knifepoint sexual assault and two robberies.

When the new security program comes into place, officers will be staffed on the routes determined to be most volatile. Those officers will have a difficult task: increasing security and preventing harm while also not endangering other riders when confronting troublesome passengers. The officers will have the power to detain; former Winnipeg police chief Herb Stephen told the Free Press earlier this month de-escalation techniques will be key.

It is clear something needs to be done. With violence on Transit buses on the rise, both drivers and passengers have every reason to be wary about being on the vehicles at all, though drivers have little choice in the matter. That no one on the bus is legally empowered or properly trained to intervene makes the situation feel hopeless.

It is far from a helpful development considering that, in a time where a car-oriented society must consider a greater implementation of public transit for environmental reasons, a bus ride can feel like a risk.

So, help is on the way. Good. But then what?

It is likely the mere presence of security officers, trained and empowered to detain riders, will have a chilling effect on the violence. Such was the case when new laws came in to crack down on the sale of stolen catalytic converters (thefts plummeted); such was the case when Millennium Library installed metal detectors (the discovery of knives and other weapons at the door dwindled near to nothing).

But this doesn’t address the issues at its core. As always when discussing the social ills which plague Winnipeg, increased security and enforcement will not alleviate the poverty, trauma, drug addiction, and precarity which together fuel the chaos that is spilling into Winnipeg Transit’s fleet. A quieter, calmer bus ride should not be taken as permission to just forget those problems exist in the streets the buses travel.

Until they are, all these security measures serve only to make things better in the meantime. They clamp a lid down, hard, on the situation, making us all feel a little safer.

But it can’t last, and that’s the problem. Underneath the lid, things are still boiling, and the pressure will only build up for so long. Without real, substantial solutions to change the way things are at all levels of life in Winnipeg, the lid won’t last for long, and when it’s blown off, we’ll wind up right back where we started.