City highlights safety measures for Saskatoon Transit

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City officials are reacting to rising violence in recent weeks on Saskatoon Transit buses.

Transit director Mike Moellenbeck acknowledged Thursday at a media briefing the heightened sense of urgency around employee and customer safety in light of a spate of violence on buses, including a May 24 incident when a 20-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl were stabbed in an altercation involving several passengers and the May 2 stabbing of an 18-year-old man on a bus at the intersection of 12th Street East and Broadway Avenue.

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While he said the problems on city buses reflect increasing social disorder in all public places, Moellenbeck said Transit is working to have a “more widely seen” uniformed presence in and around buses.

This includes more supervisors accompanying drivers on some routes, more commissionaire patrols at key terminals and the addition of community support officers (CSOs) starting in July.

Moellenbeck said Transit is also “looking at the logistics and circumstances” of banning problem riders, suggesting bans could come either due to the severity of an incident or for cumulative disorderly behaviour.

Transit employees are set to receive more training in de-escalation and an enhanced mental health support program, Moellenbeck said, acknowledging the toll violence takes on workers.

While some measures are meant to be preventative, Moellenbeck said Transit is also working on a streamlined process for reporting incidents to police and looking at installing closed-circuit TV cameras at the downtown and the Confederation Mall terminals to supplement evidence collected by the cameras already mounted in all city buses.

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A media release said the city will also advocate for tougher criminal sentences in cases of assaults against Transit employees.

Moellenbeck said Transit is not considering a stricter stance on what he termed the “complex” issue” of fare enforcement. Currently, Transit employees are instructed not to confront people who get on a bus without paying. Moellenbeck said disputes around fare payment put employees at risk of being assaulted.

Further, he said issues can occur with both fare-paying and non-fare-paying customers, and there is no desire to further “marginalize” people who can’t afford the fare but ride the bus without causing problems.

The city is adding six new CSOs as part of having the fire department take over of the program, which has uniformed outreach workers patrol the Downtown, Riversdale and Broadway business improvement districts. The extra staff will allow CSOs to work on Transit buses and at terminals with the most incidents.

Assistant Fire Chief Yvonne Raymer clarified that CSOs are not peace officers; they won’t have the power to force someone to get off a bus. Rather, she said the CSOs are trained to develop relationships and de-escalate situations.

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Darcy Pederson, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 615 representing Transit employees, said the union has been consulted, and appreciates the measures being taken.

That said, Pederson wasn’t yet willing to call Saskatoon Transit a safe service for people to use.  He said there is a need to “go a little bit further” on safety, likely with more involvement from police.

“It’s scary; our members are scared. It weighs heavy on their minds,” he said, adding that getting violence and disorder under control will be key to ensuring the success of an upcoming multi-million dollar bus-rapid transit network.

While he welcomes the addition of CSOs, Pederson noted the program’s expansion to Transit has been in the works for a year and a half, and suggested the increased level and severity of violence over that time might be too much for the CSOs to handle.

“What happens when a knife comes out? (CSOs) aren’t armed, they don’t have the ability to ban people, they don’t have the ability to get people off the bus; you can only de-escalate so much,” he said, adding he worries CSOs will be “just as at-risk as our operators,” but without even the plexiglass barriers drivers have for protection.

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