Following two violent incidents at a metro station last week, public transportation safety is once again in the news. Although the subway remains extremely safe, there is reason to take a close look at what is happening underground and the gaps in current security measures.
Officials from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) are telling the truth when they say that the metro is extremely safe. Violent crime there peaked in the late 1980s, then began a decline that lasted thirty years. Even though criminal and violent acts have increased considerably since 2021 (an increase of 63%), and this situation must be taken seriously, their level remains historically low.
The increase in violent crimes observed since 2021 has led many people to call for an increased presence of police and security agents in the metro. These calls have been heard. Since the end of 2021, the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) has routed most 911 calls from metro stations to its neighborhood stations, which allows the hundred or so patrol officers in the metro section to respond. focus on criminal investigations inside the network.
The STM has also hired more security agents, increasing its team of special constables from 170 members in 2021 to 200 by the end of 2023. In addition, last January, it created a unit of six “security ambassadors », and this should reach 20 members by the end of spring. Finally, a new mixed squad, the Metro Intervention and Consultation Team (EMIC), was introduced in November 2020, and 8 psychosocial workers from the civilian squad, the Mobile Mediation and Social Intervention Team (EMMIS). ), were deployed in metro stations last December.
These actors play various roles in a “multi-level” police intervention model, which ranges from simple psychosocial intervention (directing a person experiencing homelessness to external social services) to issuing tickets for “incivility.” » (for example, sleeping on a bench) to repression and incarceration (in the event of a real criminal act).
The limits of multilevel police intervention
All these levels of police intervention aim at the same objective: preserving the safety or feeling of safety of the average metro user. The safety of homeless and marginalized people is relegated to the background. In fact, these people are generally considered a threat to the safety of others, even though they are the people most likely to experience violent and criminal acts on the subway and elsewhere.
Community organizations are unique in prioritizing the needs of marginalized people, but their resources are increasingly limited. While Montreal has increased its budget for police and security officers, since last year it has no longer funded the services of street and support workers. According to the Support Network for Single and Homeless People of Montreal (RAPSIM), this disinvestment will lead to the disappearance of 30 street and support worker positions by 2025.
The scope of this approach to security is obviously limited, as almost everyone now understands. While Quebecor figures continue to call for an increased police presence, it is widely accepted, including by the SPVM, that current security problems are only a symptom of other social problems that the police do not have the capacity to to resolve. According to the new consensus, the solution lies in increased funding for housing and other social services, and it is the Government of Quebec that is being asked to provide it.
And yet, this new consensus also presents certain shortcomings. First, it continues to present vulnerable people as a problem, a presence to be eliminated — of course, in the gentlest way possible. Then, social services are seen as the missing piece of the security puzzle, with no one questioning whether the current pieces (the huge police and security forces) are the right ones.
Both of these assumptions can and should be questioned. In fact, many security models reject them entirely.
Towards global transport security
Over the past three years, cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia and nonprofits like ACT-LA and TransForm have developed comprehensive transportation safety plans that prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable. These plans recognize that policing does not always equal safety. For many people, particularly racialized and homeless people, the police are in fact a source of insecurity, and their presence can interfere with the support offered by street workers — two observations that have also been made in Montreal.
Furthermore, rather than seeking to eliminate vulnerable people, comprehensive security plans aim to meet their needs inside public transit stations (among other places). To do this, partnerships with community organizations can provide direct support to marginalized people at stations, and social service centers (with supervised consumption centers) can even be introduced at some stations.
Public transportation riders can also be educated on how to navigate socially diverse environments. Using brochures, posters and videos, they can learn to distinguish real threats to their safety from situations that are simply uncomfortable. It is also possible to teach them basic techniques for defusing crises and intervening as witnesses.
The general goal of these measures, as the ACT-LA alliance explains, is not to purify transit stations of perceived dangers, but to make them “sanctuaries,” where meeting needs of the most vulnerable populations becomes the starting point and the key vector of better security for all.
What Montreal ultimately needs is not a missing piece in a ready-made security puzzle. What Montreal needs instead is a new direction.