Councillor ready to take action on buses

By Marilla Stephenson, The Chronicle Herald

Somebody is ready to stand up to fight crime in Halifax right now, not next year or after the next election.

Coun. Harry McInroy says the city needs to take action now to beef up security on Metro Transit buses to protect drivers and passengers.

The Cole Harbour councillor, contacted Monday in in Santa Fe, N.M. at the international urban safety conference called Making Cities Livable, was responding to last week’s incident on a bus in downtown Dartmouth.

The driver was taken to hospital after being assaulted. A group of young men had attempted to steal a book of transfers and the driver was beaten after he attempted to stop the theft.

One man was to appear Monday in Dartmouth court to face assault charges.

“The key front line people in the transit system are those drivers and we owe it to them to stand behind them and let them know we’re not going to allow this stuff to happen,” says McInroy.

He says the city needs to not only look at security cameras, as is already the plan for some buses, but also having security officers at bus depots and on routes where problems are already known to exist.

“It doesn’t have to be every bus and it doesn’t have to be all the time,” but “we need some form of policing in place,” he says.

The councillor does not think it is necessary to put police officers on the buses. But he says a security force “somewhere between full-fledged police officers and private security guards” is needed.

He says a number of other Canadian cities already have such forces and it is time that Halifax follow suit in order to protect current and future investments in our transit system.

McInroy believes that if the city does not move to demonstrate that the system is safe, ridership levels could suffer. He says he already knows of people who are reluctant to travel on the buses — some routes and at some times of day — because they do not feel secure.

“If it becomes common knowledge that you can get on a bus and do anything you want — you wait — things will just get worse. It will grow.”

Given the level of effort being expended to increase ridership, get people out of cars and to beef up transit service, you would think ensuring a safe system would be the number one priority.

At a Harbour East community council meeting in April, McInroy says police officials told councillors that undercover police officers had been travelling on some bus routes because of problems that had occurred.

At the recent release of the city’s report on crime by professor Don Clairmont, I asked Deputy Police Chief Chris McNeil about undercover offices on buses. He says he was unaware of any current operations but acknowledged that there have been times when officers have been required on buses “if there had been a particular problem.”

Generally, though, he says the transit system is safe. The comments were made before last week’s attack.

“To say that there is a compelling need for safety on transit buses, I’m not aware of that. I wouldn’t say that jumps out.

“Our focus still continues to be where the crime is happening because disadvantaged communities are under stress. Our transit system is very safe. That’s our message.

“There have been some incidents when drivers and others have expressed some concerns, but transit is not a matter where we’re continually getting calls that would justify a specific response.”

Dan MacDonald, who heads the metro local of the union representing drivers, thinks otherwise.

After the Friday night attack, he outlined a series of incidents involving drivers last year, including one in which a driver was off the job for six months after being hit in the head with a rock and another where a veteran driver was kicked in the head.

It is all beginning to sound a bit like the issue of safety for taxi drivers. It took a murder before the city finally moved to make shields between drivers and their passengers mandatory.

McInroy says he was told by Santa Fe Mayor David Coss that cameras were placed on every bus two years ago after a driver was beaten so badly that he was permanently disabled.

“The bus can be an isolated location where those who want to perpetrate criminal activity can do so unchallenged,” says McInroy. “The drivers are on their own.”

A workplace violence study last year found drivers for the Metro Transit system regularly suffered abuse, with 60 percent of them reporting incidents where they had been kicked, shoved, attacked with a weapon and threatened with violence.

Halifax should be past the point of studies, reviews and reports. As the Clairmont report outlined with stunning clarity, we have a serious crime problem. Enough of the heads in the sand; it is time for action.