VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Some local mayors are voicing their concerns, wondering how efficient Transit Police are. Vancouver’s mayor is one of those and he’s now suggesting getting rid of it.
Gregor Robertson says there have been concerns for a while. He adds if there are already police forces in every city across the region, then why not just use them?
“We would like to see TransLink be more efficient and focus on transportation, specifically. Policing, we have great police forces here in Metro Vancouver and perhaps we should be using them instead of having a whole different force that’s more expensive to run.”
He wants to see a comparison of costs between having transit police versus using local forces. “We have to see the numbers and understand what would be more efficient and what would increase public safety, that’s the bottom line here. We all want it to be safer and the transit police were created in part to make sure there was focus on improving safety at transit stations in particular, so that’s got to continuing to improve.”
Robertson says it doesn’t “add up” of having an entire police force dedicated just to the transit system. He thinks TransLink should focus more on its service for users and leave policing to the mayors.
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Why become a regular muni police or join the RCMP, just become a transit cop; great salary, benefits, get all the status of a regular police officer, yet all you have to do is check fares and write tickets, ride in a car all day…What a great job
John, you’ve gotta get your facts straight. TTC in Toronto had Special Constables, but recently concluded they needed officers with full police powers, and now the Toronto Police Transit Unit patrols the Toronto subway. Same story in Montreal, where their Special Constables have been reduced to security guard status, because it was too dangerous for them to try to do police-like duties, and the SPVM (Montreal Police) Transit Unit looks after their Metro system. Vancouver might be the only city in Canada with completely stand-alone Transit Police, but we’re certainly not the only city that’s found it necessary to have police officers, not security guards, on its transit system.
$100,000 plus govt pension checking 3$ fare is overkill and ripoff