Safety officers already making a mark

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/04/2024 (548 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been a month of milestones for Winnipeg Transit and its new squad of community safety officers.

The city finally relented last year and began hiring trained personnel to keep the peace aboard Transit buses, as well as patrolling its many bus shelters across the city.

Years of complaints from bus drivers and passengers about violence and threats had piled up so high the problem could no longer be ignored.

The 22 safety officers and supervisors who completed a month-long training course early in 2024 began their work in late February and spent March shifting their efforts into top gear.

Their first full week on the job proved to be a busy one, as they responded to more than 100 incidents, according to the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505, which represents Winnipeg Transit employees, including its drivers.

A Free Press reporter tagged along with two safety officers in mid-March who said they respond to between five and 10 incidents a day, beyond situations that happen on their regular patrols.

The $2.5-million program has proven to be far more than a group tasked with keeping order while Transit’s buses travel from stop to stop.

In just a few weeks, the safety officers have become another instrument the city can use to cope with its population of unhoused people, some of whom use Winnipeg Transit’s bus shelters to stave off the winter’s chill.

People congregate around bus stops and shelters, and extra pairs of eyes keeping lookout should make waiting for and riding city buses a safer experience for passengers and the drivers who get them from point A to point B.

The safety officers are also trained in first aid, and in one incident near a bus shelter beside Portage Place, they administered live-saving CPR and naloxone to an unconscious person before calling paramedics for further assistance.

They’ve also transported people to support organizations such as Main Street Project — warmer, safer places than bus shelters that also provide support — and in those cases they’ve eased the burden on police.

It’s too early to determine whether the safety officers’ presence will reduce the more than 250 security incidents that happened aboard Transit buses in 2023.

During the past month, the safety officers, sporting fluorescent yellow jackets but carrying no firearms, have become part of the city’s landscape and the community.

“We’ve had … a high number of (bus drivers) that are fist-bumping and citizens that are engaging our safety officers and letting them know they very much appreciate the presence … People are actually approaching them and telling them that they feel safer,” said Christine Welsh, a team supervisor.

As with any new program, there have been growing pains.

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It wasn’t long after the peace officers began their Transit patrols when two of them were assaulted and an arrest was made.

Confrontations were expected, but the question of who makes arrests in these cases has become another bump in the road for the new program.

The Winnipeg Police Association says the Transit safety officers — who were given the authority to perform searches and seizures, detentions and arrests by recent changes in provincial law — are performing police duties, and have launched a grievance against the city, which will be heard by an arbitrator in August.

The safety officers’ program, which has begun with such potential, should be given the opportunity to become part of a citywide team to make Winnipeg a safer place in which to live and travel, rather than be treated as an adversary by existing law-enforcement agencies.

A program that’s already showing promise shouldn’t be a poker chip in a jurisdictional union battle.