As ridership plummets, the TTC faces another problem: violent crime
There has been an alarming rise in violence on public transit, and it’s an issue that won’t just be solved by more policing, warn experts.
By Lex Harvey Transportation Reporter
Tue., Dec. 27, 2022 9 min. read
Article was updated 8 hrs ago
For 50 years, Connie Harrison has taken the TTC. She first came to Toronto in 1972, back when the city had those “really funny old streetcars,” and has used public transit ever since, both to get around and to explore new areas of the city.
But during the pandemic, something changed. One day while riding her local bus, Harrison noticed a group of what appeared to be intoxicated people outwardly discussing killing someone. Elsewhere on the system, she began to see more and more people “out of control,” acting threatening and aggressive, seemingly without reprimand.
It made her scared to ride the transit system she has long relied on.
“I’m 67,” she said. “If somebody tried to hurt me they would succeed, because I don’t have the power to oppose them really.”
Violent crime has risen on the TTC since the COVID-19 pandemic, despite depressed ridership. While Toronto remains one of the safest cities in the world, the recent spate of brutal and random attacks on the TTC has left even some dedicated riders wary of taking transit, at a time when Toronto’s system is desperately trying to lure back riders. While the city and the TTC have promised more enforcement, experts say adding more police won’t fix the social issues that are driving the violence in the first place.
There is nothing inherently unsafe about transit, which is a public space that reflects the broader issues of the city that it moves. The TTC is a microcosm of Toronto, which is struggling with a mental health crisis, a housing crisis and a drug poisoning crisis, all which have persisted for decades but reached a tipping point during the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, Harrison and a friend had talked about riding the subway to High Park, to see the capybaras at the zoo. It was on a train at that same station where two women were randomly stabbed on Dec. 9, an attack that killed 31-year-old Vanessa Kurpiewska.
In just some of the other violent incidents this year, a TTC employee was stabbed at Dupont station; a bus driver was accosted and stabbed after a fare dispute; another employee was attacked by six people at Sheppard-Yonge; an Indian international student was shot dead outside Sherbourne station; a man was choked and robbed at Pioneer Village station; a woman was pushed onto the tracks at Bloor-Yonge; a 12-year-old girl was sexually assaulted on a bus; and a woman died after she was doused in flammable liquid and lit on fire on a bus at Kipling station.
The number of offences against TTC customers shot up during the pandemic, even as ridership plummeted, and data from the first half of 2022 shows this year is on track to be the most violent on transit since 2017.
In 2020, the TTC reported 735 offences against customers — defined as the most serious incidents reported to police (assault, sexual assault, robbery, theft, threatening, harassment and indecent exposure) — up from 666 in 2019, even with fewer than half the riders. Offences stayed constant at 734 for 2021 as ridership rose.
In the first half of 2022, the TTC reported 451 offences against customers. If that rate persisted, the TTC will have reported roughly 900 offences this year. As of November, the TTC’s weekday ridership was about 68 per cent of pre-COVID levels.
In a statement, TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said “we are obviously concerned about incidents of violence on the TTC and we remain committed to working with police, the City of Toronto and our union partners on ways we can all make the TTC as safe as possible for customers and employees.”
He added, “But we also know that there are bigger societal and systemic issues at play when it comes to the root causes of these incidents that require a multi-pronged response. We welcome being part of a broader discussion with all community and government stakeholders about what can be done to improve safety and security on the TTC.”
Major crime in Toronto is at a five-year high, according to Toronto police’s public safety data portal. While homicides are down this year, assaults, robberies and sexual violations have all increased from 2021. Overall, major crime is three per cent above 2019 levels — a significant boost after two years of reduced crime during the pandemic. After assault, the second most common crime is auto theft, which has nearly doubled in the past year.
What is especially frightening about the recent violence on the TTC is how arbitrary attacks have been — in nearly all cases, the violence was committed by a stranger, who was unprovoked.
On Monday morning last week, a woman was arrested after allegedly attacking six people on Line 1 between Queen and Davisville. A video shared on social media showed splatters of blood on the floor of the subway car.
“It just makes you think, ‘That blood could be mine,’ ” Harrison said. Now she avoids the TTC whenever possible, concentrating her errands and appointments to a day or two per month and budgeting to take a taxi instead.
People of all backgrounds commit violence, but experts connect the recent series of violent transit attacks to underlying socioeconomic and health issues in the city that have always existed but were made worse during the pandemic.
“The vast majority of people have no violent inclinations. But when you continue to … deprive (people) of very basic needs and access to health care, there can be unfortunate circumstances where people are very desperate, people are very exasperated, very agitated,” said Dr. Andrew Boozary, a physician and executive director of University Health Network’s Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine.
There is no evidence linking mental illness with criminality, but when poor mental health is combined with other factors like long-standing homelessness, a precarious living situation and/or poor access to resources and supports, risk of violence increases, Boozary said.
Canadians’ mental health has deteriorated since COVID-19 first hit, and help is hard to come by, especially for those who can’t afford to pay. Meanwhile, Toronto’s shelter system is bursting at the seams. Over the course of one week in November, emergency shelters were more than 98 per cent full, the Star reported. When temperatures drop, some homeless people must resort to sheltering in subway stations or riding buses or trains on loops to stay warm.
“You have people who have nowhere else to go but to sleep or stay on public transport, in lobbies, and in different public spaces because we have not delivered on housing as a human right,” Boozary said.
The tragedy goes both ways, he notes: homeless people are often the targets of random acts of violence. Last week, eight teenage girls were charged with swarming and murdering a homeless man in downtown Toronto.
Hate crimes have also surged. In 2021, Toronto recorded more hate crimes than in any year since police began collecting data in 1993. Jewish people were most commonly targeted, followed by Black and East and Southeast Asian people.
Toronto is not alone in seeing heightened crime on transit. Cities across North America, including New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, have seen a higher rate of violent assaults, muggings and stabbings compared to pre-pandemic levels.
That public transit is perceived as unsafe by some is a big problem for cities that are struggling to recoup ridership and revive their downtown cores. The TTC’s drop in ridership is a bane for a system that relies on fares more than any other revenue source to keep it running.
But riders say the lack of people on transit isn’t just a consequence of violence — it’s part of the problem.
“There’s safety in numbers,” said Shelagh Pizey-Allen, director of transit advocacy organization TTCriders. “When I have had a bad experience on the TTC, it was late at night and there was just no one around.” In a report from July, the TTC noted throughout the pandemic, it was more vulnerable groups, including women, low-income people and shift workers, who relied most on the system.
In response to transit crime, some cities are adding more police to trains. In New York, where a man shot 10 people on a subway car in April, the addition of 1,000 police officers has not deterred crime but has led to more arrests for minor offences like fare evasion, disproportionately affecting people of colour.
Some cities are trying new approaches. Philadelphia has hired civilian social workers to patrol trains alongside police — outreach workers trained to look out for vulnerable people and offer them services.
The city of Toronto, the TTC and union leaders have been in talks about how to reduce transit violence. What solutions will come of these meetings are not yet clear, but what is clear is that policing will be at the forefront. Currently, The TTC is policed by a small number of special constables, front-line law enforcement personnel who can make arrests, file police reports and respond to emergencies. They work closely with Toronto police.
At any given time, a minimum of eight special constables, working in pairs, patrol the entire TTC system, according to the union representing those workers, CUPE 5089. The union is advocating for that number to increase to 16. The TTC said it recently added more special constable patrols to the system and is deploying more.
In response to questions from the Star about transit safety, Mayor John Tory said he will increase the police budget next year.
“The TTC must be safe for riders and all transit workers, and violence or harassment on the TTC or anywhere in our city is unacceptable,” said Tory.
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