The metro and buses are safe, the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) assured Friday, at a time when the number of violent incidents seems to be following an upward trend in 2023, with more than 600 events recorded as of September .
By email, the transport company reiterates that “the social context in our network has changed considerably in recent years”. “As the metro reflects the general public space, we can observe the same increasingly complex social issues there. The Montreal metro is safe and issues of violence are handled by the SPVM,” nevertheless assures spokesperson Laurence Houde-Roy.
She was thus reacting to data from the Montreal City Police Service (SPVM) revealed on Friday, which shows that 603 incidents of a violent nature were recorded for the year 2023.
The statistics currently stop at mid-September, which means that around three and a half months have not yet been counted. For comparison, for the whole of 2022, 742 violent events were recorded.
Calculating the average for 2023 so far, over eight and a half months, we obtain more than 70 violent events per month on Montreal’s buses and metro. The increase is considerable, since last year, this figure was 61 on a monthly basis.
In January and February 2023, almost 100 violations were noted on a monthly basis. Please note: the spectrum of types of incidents is wide, but the most frequent offenses are assault, armed or not, as well as robbery or even sexual assault.
Efforts to correct the situation
At the STM, we assure that we are deploying “a lot of effort to ensure the feeling of security of its customers, including a series of new measures, as announced in recent months, which will ensure a greater presence of staff in the station” .
At the beginning of May, the STM had in fact confirmed the upcoming hiring of around twenty new special constables or inspectors, to patrol the metro and buses.
Another twenty additional maintenance workers also took up their duties this summer in order to make the network cleaner, while new security agents are now crisscrossing the metro to detect potentially problematic situations, without however being able to intervene.
Barring a surprise, special constables will also be equipped with cayenne pepper gel by the end of December in the metro. The STM believes that this additional tool will help to “dissuade” anyone who wants to attack its agents.
In 2022, some 323 events involving the use of force occurred, which corresponds to an increase of 17.88% compared to 2019, indicated a report from the Commission on Standards, Equity and Health. and work safety (CNESST) carried out after a complaint from the union and that The Press had obtained last June.