Calgary transit riders will see an increased security and peace officer presence on the transit system effective Tuesday.
But the mayor said the increased enforcement and costs will be “tough to do as one order of government.”
Overnight patrols with police and peace officers will be operating seven nights a week.
Calgary Transit is doubling its contracted security guards from eight to 16, with the goal to triple that number to 24 by the end of April.
And more peace officers will be redeployed to the downtown free fare zone along 7 Avenue.
Calgary Police Service Chief Mark Neufeld said CPS officers have been focussing on the more serious offenders and worst offences in the areas having the most problems. Monday’s announcement marked a shift in strategy.
“We now must address the day to day behaviors and conditions that are leading to conflict, crime and violence in our public spaces. That includes the littering, the loitering, the open drug possession, the public intoxication, the panhandling, the causing a disturbance, the types of general disorder offences that we currently see in our public spaces but wish we did not,” Neufeld said.
Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said her city isn’t the only one facing increased public disorder and drug use on transit.
“Transit is an essential service at the core of any major city and people should not have to think twice about using it,” the mayor said.
“However, the incidents that we are seeing along our transit corridors in recent months are unlike the things that we have experienced in the past and this is the case in cities across this country.”
The city will also make some changes to the “built environment” of transit stations, including replacing some benches with a “no waiting” zone, increasing the lighting, running regular announcements of CCTV surveillance and increased cleaning. The city has also created a rapid response team to address things like property damage and vandalism.
One transit researcher said it’s not surprising that societal issues are turning up at CTrain stations.
“Public transit works because people come together and people interact and people share space and so it’s naturally going to be a place where underlying societal issues will interact with the public,” Willem Klumpenhouwer told Global News. “And I don’t think that transit then needs to be blamed or needs to be necessarily targeted for this specific issue.”
The research consultant and postdoctoral fellow at the Transit Analytics Lab at the University of Toronto said a police presence doesn’t necessarily make people from all walks of life feel safer while using transit – especially groups who tend to use transit more often than others.
He also said making the environment “more hostile” through measures like removing benches would also make everybody’s experience of the transit system worse.
Aaron Coon, Calgary Transit’s chief officer that oversees safety, said the city sees more than 60,000 calls for peace officers a year, and while the city is stepping up its enforcement, it will continue to work with the social service sector to connect people in need with available resources.
“By adding these additional resources like peace officers and security, we can ensure that we have the right resource taking care of the right types of concerns with the ultimate goal of allowing our police officers to focus on policing criminal activity in our communities,” he said.
Klumpenhouwer said reducing service times and shortening wait times can help make the experience of using transit better.
“I think there’s a good example there of how you can improve people’s experience and perception and feeling of safety if the service is well-used and has high service as well. So we shouldn’t ignore that as a possible solution.”
Assaults, weapons reports up in 2023
Neufeld said reports of assault in the city’s transit system have seen month-over-month increases through the first quarter of 2023, rising from 26 in January to 41 in March, and that three month period has seen an average of one per day.
“Interestingly, nearly 10 per cent of these were actually assaults on peace officers, the majority being transit officers.”
The police chief said reports of weapons on transit have also been increasing in Q1 of 2023, with a total of 26 in that time period.
Neufeld revisited recent undercover investigative operations conducted by CPS that resulted in 268 weapons- and drug-related criminal charges.
In addition to a “veritable pharmacy on transit,” Neufeld said weapons seized during the undercover ops ranged from knives and machetes to bear spray and a handgun that’s still being investigated for its ability to fire live rounds.
The police chief pointed to a recent event that disrupted lives worldwide for creating the circumstances to let these types of crime to come up.
“A permissive environment was unavoidably created during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of reduced enforcement activity, owing to court closures and systemwide efforts that were done to reduce exposure to COVID-19,” Neufeld said.
He also said vulnerable citizens who normally used services like shelters tried to social distance as well, with some migrating to transit infrastructure that was serving fewer riders.
Moving the problem elsewhere
Calgary Transit’s top cop said the city’s plan to make the transit system safer could push the social disorder into surrounding neighbourhoods.
“We recognize that if we remove these issues from our transit system, they will end up in our communities, so it is a collaborative effort,” Coon said.
The CPS chief said displacement of social disorder as a result of increased enforcement is likely to happen at the same time as changes in the seasons are likely to move elements out of transit and into the community.
“Displacement is definitely a concern that we’re looking at,” Neufeld said.
“This needs to be a sustained effort moving forward. It’s not a project or an initiative or whatever that will end, you know, in two weeks or something like that. This is really an upgrade to the operating system of certainly the Calgary Police Service and portions of the city that will be sustained as we go forward.
“Ultimately, the idea would be to get more people out of the system into mental health and addiction supports.”
One harm reduction advocate questions why the city is taking the approach of increased policing instead of trying to attend to some of the needs the individuals involved in the social disorder.
“We continue to pile on policing resources instead of actually addressing people’s basic needs, like adequate housing — appropriate types of housing that actually respond to people’s requests – that are not coercive, that are not demanding that they go through treatment, for example, before getting access to housing,” Euan Thomson of Each + Every told Global News.
“There’s a lot of people in this city that are using drugs every day that don’t have a safe place to go. So a transit station makes the most sense — any public area really is going to become a supervised consumption site in the absence of enough sites for people to go and use safely.”
Thomson characterised the systems in the province as forced abstinence, a more traumatic and less successful strategy.
“People lean on each other for community,” he said. “Then they’re also in the absence of other people around there, they’re going to hopefully be found if they’re overdosing. So, you know, being in a back alley is about the least safe place you could be.”
Thomson also said having police or security show up at a social disturbance escalates the situation by nature of having a uniformed officer present.
“What we need is civilian-led mobile crisis response teams that are able to de-escalate situations where people are in distress instead of escalating them,” he said.
A question of cost
Gondek said the funds for the additional law enforcement comes from budget decisions made in November 2022, including a $20 million increase to the CPS budget and $33 million for transit recovery, of which $11.2 million is going to safety efforts.
And recently, council approved $32 million in operational savings to be used for recovery of the transit system.
“This is a total of $85 million in investments that has allowed Calgary Transit to work in an integrated manner with the Calgary Police Service,” Gondek said. “Both organizations have a tremendous amount of trust in each other, and this is the only way that we can establish safety on transit and restore the public’s confidence.”
Gondek said the province’s pilot project that saw a dozen sheriffs relocate their patrols to downtown Calgary “was appreciated, it is neither a permanent nor comprehensive solution.”
The mayor had two asks of the premier: to reinstate the city’s full portion of CPS ticket revenues – a $10 million deficit the city has to make up annually – and to adjust the municipal policing support grant to include inflation and population growth.
“This has not been done over the life of the grant, and municipalities and their citizens are suffering as a result. We need a policing support grant that is respectful of our current situation.”
Monday afternoon, Premier Danielle Smith said she was sympathetic with the city’s problems.
“We had hoped that having 12 sheriffs in Calgary and Edmonton would be enough to start stemming the tide of public disorder,” Smith said. “We know we need to do more.
“We stand together in making sure that we are putting enough resources so that we can address these issues, particularly in transit, and we’ll have more to say about that tomorrow.”