The subway and buses are safe, assured the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) on Friday, at a time when the number of violent incidents appears to be following an upward trend in 2023, with more than 600 incidents recorded in September .
Posted at 12:57 p.m.
The transport company reiterates via email that “the social context in our network has changed significantly in recent years”. “Because the subway reflects the general public space, we can see the same increasingly complex social problems there. The Montreal subway is safe and issues of violence are dealt with by the SPVM,” assures spokesman Laurence Houde-Roy.
She was responding to data released on Friday by the Montreal City Police Service (SPVM), which showed that 603 incidents of a violent nature were recorded in 2023.
The statistics currently end at mid-September, which means that around three and a half months have not yet been counted. For comparison: 742 violent events were registered for the entire year of 2022.
If we calculate the average so far for 2023 over eight and a half months, we record more than 70 violent events per month on Montreal’s buses and subway. The increase is significant, as last year there were 61 per month.
In January and February 2023, almost 100 violations were detected each month. Please note: The range of types of incidents is wide, but the most common crimes are armed or unarmed assault, but also robbery or even sexual assault.
Efforts to correct the situation
At the STM we assure that we are “making great efforts to ensure the feeling of safety 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”. .
In fact, at the beginning of May, the STM had confirmed the impending recruitment of around twenty new special police officers or inspectors to patrol the subway and buses.
An additional twenty additional maintenance workers have also joined forces this summer to help clean up the network, while new security guards now roam the subway, identifying potentially problematic situations without being able to intervene.
Unless there is a surprise, special police officers will also be provided with cayenne pepper gel in the subway by the end of December. The STM believes this additional tool will help “deter” anyone seeking to attack its agents.
There were around 323 use-of-force incidents in 2022, an increase of 17.88% compared to 2019, according to a report by the Commission on Standards, Equity and Occupational Health and Safety (CNESST), following a complaint by was drawn up by the union and which La Presse received last June.