The head of TransLink says he “will not stand” for the recent surge in violent attacks on buses and SkyTrains in Metro Vancouver, vowing Friday to take action with police and governments.
CEO Kevin Quinn offered his condolences to the family of a 17-year-old stabbed to death on a Surrey bus on Tuesday, and noted that his own two children take public transit every day.
“I’m angry. We’re really angry. We’re very frustrated,” he said at a RapidBus service announcement in Surrey.
“The fact is that we will not stand for these types of incidents on our system. We will not allow criminals or those who want to commit crimes to come on to our system. This is our system.”
The comments come in the aftermath of multiple recent stabbings and assaults on SkyTrain lines and buses in Metro Vancouver that have prompted the police force to ramp up their presence on the transit system.
The most recent assault happened Friday on a bus in downtown Vancouver, resulting in one victim being brought to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
A gruesome fight is also said to have broken out between two West Vancouver bus passengers on Wednesday afternoon, according to ATU Local 134, which represents the city’s bus drivers.
Homicide investigators have identified a suspect but made no arrests in the Tuesday slaying of local teen Ethan Bespflug at 100th Avenue and King George Boulevard.
Three suspects also remain at large in a stabbing that left one person in the hospital at the Columbia SkyTrain station in New Westminster on Monday.
One man was arrested Sunday in connection to a series of alleged assaults on a Millennium Line train in Burnaby and an attempted knife-slashing on the street afterward.
Last week, another man was charged with attempted murder and four counts of terrorism after allegedly slashing a passenger’s throat in the name of ISIS on April 1.
Metro Vancouver Transit Police have increased their presence on buses and SkyTrains and assigned officers normally tasked with other duties to patrol the routes as well.
Another 24 community safety police officers will be added to the patrol roster as well, Quinn said. They will be trained in de-escalation of mental health incidents, he added.
“You have my assurance that we are doing everything we can, in coordinating with our local, our municipal, our provincial authorities to make our systems safe, and will continue to explore ways to make our systems safe.”
There are currently 184 sworn Metro Vancouver Transit Police officers.
At the RapidBus announcement, B.C. Transportation Minister Rob Fleming said the “sad and unacceptable” events of the past week are not a reflection of the transit system, but of the “unacceptable levels of violence in society.”
“This is a bigger issue that governments like ours and governments across the country are trying to address through a variety of interventions around mental health, addictions, a more effective public safety system,” he said.
“We’re working with Ottawa right now on the sentencing gap that has allowed too many repeat offenders to be out, in some cases within hours of being charged with quite serious and significant crimes.”
Fleming said he is working with several unions representing public transit workers in B.C. and has made a commitment to taking “additional steps.” He did not elaborate on what those steps are.
He also would not say whether he thought the Metro Vancouver Transit Police needed more officers to addresses the recent spike in incidents.
Quinn said he has “heard those calls,” but said more police officers alone will not solve the problem.
“At our peak hours, we have 1,100 buses out and about throughout the entire Metro Vancouver region. We have 63 SkyTrain stations, 90 SkyTrain cars in service at any moment,” he explained.
“I think we’ve got to recognize it’s got to be a multi-pronged strategy. Are police one of those prongs? Absolutely, sure, yes. I think it also comes down to folks knowing about our text service.”
Passengers who feel unsafe on public transit are urged to text 87-77-77 to connect with a police officer. The texts also help Metro Vancouver Transit Police map out crime hotspots in the region.
Quinn said TransLink has seen a “dramatic increase” in ridership recently, but commensurate increases in transit system violence have not followed.
“We are one of the safest systems in North America,” he said. “We have roughly 400,000 riders on our system every single day and the vast, vast majority of those trips are reliable and they are safe.”
Addressing the recent assaults, Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West said he’s not sure what it will take for those charged with public safety and criminal justice to “wake the hell up and do something about it.”
He agreed it will take more than a fresh batch of police officers to solve the problem.
“This didn’t happen overnight. We’ve seen over several years our justice system become a joke. It prioritizes release over detainment. It preaches compassion for everyone except the victims,” said West, chair of the TransLink Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation.
“We need to turn things around and we need to understand that there are some bad people out there and those people need to be detained.”