The Press in Toronto | Rifles, machetes and anxiety on public transport

A passenger stabbed in the head on a tram. Two metro employees chased by a man armed with a syringe. A driver who was shot by an air rifle. A young woman attacked on a bus because of her race.

It’s brewing in Toronto, and not just because of the surprise resignation of Mayor John Tory, who admitted Friday to having messed around for months with an ex-employee.

Since the beginning of January, the media have been reporting numerous violent events on the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) network every week. The anxiety is palpable, and the security tight, as I have witnessed for days over the past week.

This surge in crime resonates in Montreal, where complaints of incivility and the use of hard drugs are on the rise in the metro¹.

But what is happening right now in Toronto is beyond measure.

“To see so many spectacular incidents in such a short time is not common for us,” summarized Stuart Green, the spokesman for the TTC.

It’s the least we can say.

This wave of violence is unprecedented in recent Canadian history.

***

If you see something, say something. If you see something fishy, ​​report it.

This message, which has been heard for a long time in New York, is now being broadcast on a loop over the crackling loudspeakers of the Toronto subway. Several other slogans of the same kind are posted everywhere on the walls of the stations and in the trains.

The TTC recognizes that passengers – and employees – on its system are nervous, and security has been increased accordingly.

You can see it, feel it, everywhere.

The Toronto police have just dispatched 80 new officers throughout the network. They join the special constables of the TTC, a team of unarmed guards who will be enhanced by 50 new members this year.

Officers don’t mess with the puck, as I saw at Bloor-Yonge station, downtown, Thursday afternoon. A group of six officers, dressed in fluorescent yellow and orange bibs, escorted a very intoxicated person who was disturbing a convenience store owner to the exit.

Gently, but firmly. The watchword of the authorities here.

This increased visibility of law enforcement will play a “major” role in deterring at least a portion of criminals, it is hoped at the TTC. Which doesn’t quite seem to be working yet: On Sunday night, a man armed with a six-inch machete slashed a woman’s face at Spadina station with two accomplices.

Images captured by a surveillance camera – and broadcast widely – led to the arrest of the three young men on Tuesday afternoon. The TTC will soon add new cameras to the tens of thousands already scattered throughout subway stations, trains, buses and streetcars.

The TTC has decided to push this type of exercise Big Brother even further.

In many metro stations, there are now screens fixed to the wall which broadcast the images captured by the cameras live. “Like a Walmart,” Stuart Green of the TTC tells me. The idea is to show people that they are being filmed, which it is hoped will discourage some criminals from taking action.

The TTC also plans to deploy about twenty additional social workers in its huge network. A number that seems very small for a megalopolis of 6 million inhabitants struggling with a meteoric rise in homelessness and addiction and mental health problems.

It is this social crisis that partly explains the increase in crime in transport, believe many Torontonians. As in all big cities, the most vulnerable people often end up on public transport in the winter, for lack of other options.

And the options in Toronto are limited.

The city council last week refused to open new drop-in centers for the homeless, citing, among other things, a lack of staff.

A real “shame”, according to Shelagh Pizey-Allen, senior director of the organization TTCRiders, which promotes public transport.

“Opening 24-hour shelters would have cost the city $400,000 a month, while adding police will cost $1.7 million a month,” she told me.

She accuses the authorities of having reacted in an “impulsive” way by deploying dozens of new police officers in the metro, “without proof” that this strategy will work to reduce crime.

***

Even if the state of maximum alert is activated, the TTC is trying to calm things down. The dozens of violent events observed in recent months constitute a drop in the ocean of the network, which has welcomed nearly 390 million passengers in 2021.

Montreal is also on the alert, but the situation seems less alarming than in the Queen City. I spoke at length on Monday with Commander Joanne Matte, of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), who manages a team of 132 police officers assigned exclusively to interventions in the metro. They work in collaboration with the 140 special constables of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM).

Crime jumped about 25% in underground Montreal in 2021, during the first full year of the pandemic, but the increase was much lower in 2022, she explained to me.

About 80% of the interventions of its agents in the metro are related to vulnerable people, who are either homeless, drug addicts or struggling with mental health problems. Often all three at the same time, “an explosive cocktail”.

There is no question of increasing the police force for the moment, but Commander Matte confirms to me that her officers are “working more overtime” lately.

The SPVM’s approach is above all “community-based” and aims to redirect people in distress who commit acts of incivility to the best external resources, avoiding their legalization.

And that’s the rub.

Because the problem “at the source” remains intact, deplores Joanne Matte. There is a crying lack of resources in the health system to take care of people expelled from the metro. Result: they often end up coming back the next day.

This gaping hole in the social net, which gives no sign of wanting to settle in the short term, does not suggest a lull in the metro. In Montreal as in Toronto.