gabe
Senior Member
Anyways... back to our regularly scheduled programming. At least no one was hurt!
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- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
allengeorge
Senior Member
I highly, highly recommend that people read the linked article. It’s eye-opening - and deeply upsetting.
That said, we should be careful to recognize that the causes of problems on the TTC aren’t from a singular class of problem-makers. You have the unhoused, the clearly mentally-ill, teenagers looking to stir up trouble, recidivists, etc. we will need a spate of interventions.
PL1
Active Member
I ride the TTC every day. It is not the wild west. Yes, there are problems. However, reading the news (and this thread), you would think you risk death and dismemberment with every ride. That's not the case.
There are people who look at this as an opportunity to acquire increased police budgets. The reality is that this is years in the making. Yes, lots of provincial governments have underfunded mental health. However, it is the Ford government that stopped the minimum basic income pilot projects. This would likely have helped many people.
And like it or not, John Tory has been mayor for eight years. He owns many of the problems. They are his, bought with his "efficiencies" budgets. He could have raised taxes moderately (and/or insisted the TPS get rid of their show pony mounted unit) and better funded shelters, etc. Rob Ford was laughably incapable. But Tory has arguably been worse for the city with his veneer of compassion, when in fact he has neglected the city's foundations.
I'm pissed at the situation, but I hope property owners enjoy their low property taxes.
There are people who look at this as an opportunity to acquire increased police budgets. The reality is that this is years in the making. Yes, lots of provincial governments have underfunded mental health. However, it is the Ford government that stopped the minimum basic income pilot projects. This would likely have helped many people.
And like it or not, John Tory has been mayor for eight years. He owns many of the problems. They are his, bought with his "efficiencies" budgets. He could have raised taxes moderately (and/or insisted the TPS get rid of their show pony mounted unit) and better funded shelters, etc. Rob Ford was laughably incapable. But Tory has arguably been worse for the city with his veneer of compassion, when in fact he has neglected the city's foundations.
I'm pissed at the situation, but I hope property owners enjoy their low property taxes.
TTCdinosaur
Active Member
turbanplanner
Senior Member
So should we throw our hands up and say oh well because every "real" fix is 30 years away?
Admiral Beez
Superstar
The fix is for the TTC to enforce its by-laws, using their own transit police and resources. The by-laws have the solution for pretty much every negative situation on the TTC. Just enforce them.
Richard White
Senior Member
What we really need is a version of the British Transport Police.
Armed officers dedicated to the protection of the transit system.
Armed officers dedicated to the protection of the transit system.
Jonny5
Senior Member
It's all true. Media literacy is now very low, and most of our mass media are bankrupt and forced to rely on nothing more than regurgitating press releases and recording free news conferences, or the daily outrage they find on social media.
Sites like this at least allow real information to flow, and quality comment and are welcome as most neo-media are really just niche-fandom communities for dinosaurs who want to live in tiny bubbles where they must be correct because "I must be correct because no one here disagrees with me!"
There's no left - center - right anymore, and there hasn't been for about two decades. It's now backwards-fowards-backwards; two different versions of backwards with different means to justify their ends.
The right still cling to noblesse oblige lifting them up, even though it hasn't ever happened, but those glossy marketing materials and billionaires on social media convinced their childishly-naive brains "this time will be different from the last 1,000 times, because if you subscribe to pay me $199.99/month I will make it better for you!"
The left is now about using law to forcibly lower everyone's quality of life to a mean. Anyone above the mean is branded "the rich" and "evil', but the overwhelming majority are above their idea of the mean, so they get zero traction and are perpetually outraged at the fact moving to the right just a little would have allowed them to win; but moving anywhere but ever further left is heresy and you must be exiled for doing so. Urbansim was once about opportunity. Neo-Urbanism is about denying opportunity.
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crs1026
Superstar
The by-laws don’t speak to when and how security personnel should engage or how they should actually conduct a person stop. Somebody needs to articulate this, so the public (and the courts) know if police and security behaviour is inside or outside the justifiable parameters, and so that there is a reasonable grounds to stand up for the officer when any number of allegations of abusive behaviour (which some officers do resort to, so the argument can’t be sidestepped in either direction) come forward?
If a homeless person walks into the subway….. what constitutes reasonable grounds to stop them? If homeless-looking people are disproportionately stopped for fare inspection, is this discrimination? How far would a case get in court if the officer justifies the stop on the basis that the person “looked homeless”? Even the most plodding constable knows that they will get eaten alive by lawyers if they try that one.
If a mentally ill person is talking loudly to themselves, but not engaging any other passenger, are they a ”disturbance”? If their comments sound aggressive or hostile, or allude to violence (as I have witnessed several times) - are they a “threat” ? And if the officer does stop them, and cannot achieve a rational conversation, what action do they take - ejection? arrest? What level of force is allowed in that circumstance - especially considering that the mere contact with an officer may be distressing and may escalate the individual’s agitation?
If a group of high school students create an issue at a station, out of simple adolescent stupidity (which again I see plenty of) and a lone transit officer observes it, do they radio for help and have officers converge on the scene? Does that solve the situation? And what about the complication that there may be only 2 or 3 chargeable offenders in the swarm, but the rest are just lippy and then try to verbally engage the officers?
Most importantly - when is it appropriate (especially for streetcar or subway) to stop the vehicle and thereby halt transit service so that a complaint worthy situation get addressed? Again, I have witnessed several situations where I believed an offense was occurring….. but I was not certain that I would be thanked by pressing the yellow strip. In some of these, the victim solved the problem by fleeing - not a very just resolution, but had I pressed the strip, by the time the police got there, there was no longer any evidence of an incident to back me up.
The by-laws speak to none of this, and police and security agencies are utterly against revealing their actual working directives and standards. The result is utter confusion and lack of confidence in riders’ safety.
Plus, the aberrant behaviours that make us feel unsafe are often spontaneous or unprovoked. There is virtually no hope of proactively spotting and interdicting potential threats. (I have no patience for the concept of “police officer’s hunch” - there is no such thing)
As I said earlier, my personal values say none of this should be tolerated and subway behaviour should resemble church or library civility. But I don’t see our prevailing culture accepting more aggressive enforcement around any of that. Adding more officers without creating clarity about the “lines” is a recipe for disaster, IMHO.
The last thing I want as a passenger is gunplay on the platform while I am waiting for my subway. Firearms are an utterly unworkable form of force in a crowded transit context. There is no evidence that transit officers need these for self defense, although many sub-police agencies (and their individual members) argue that they are needed…., one can certainly construct a hypothetical scenario where the officer might need that level of force to defend themselves or protect others. But until that happens, don’t go there.
An interesting case study is what it took for CBSA to arm border officers post-911. Adding firearms to a previously unarmed workforce is a multi year proposition that turns the workforce upside down. I wasn’t involved with CBSA - but it’s a case study that is somewhat in the public domain so I can cite it. There are others, but given laws and non-disclosure I can’t go there.
- Paul
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toaster29
Active Member
Whether it's the case or not is kind of irrelevant, the perception is that this is the case - that getting on the TTC is a risk. Perception is enough to keep a lot of people from taking TTC. Did anyone else receive phone calls form parents or family members from outside of the GTA saying they have been seeing all the crime on the TTC on the news, and pleading with us not to take TTC? I know I did.
I'm not sure if it's just in my circles, but for people who take TTC on occasion (let's say a few times/week, for social outings, not daily for work), these people in will opt to take Uber, drive and pay to park, or (and I think this is the scariest thing for Downtown Toronto), not make it a priority to go downtown for that weekly dinner or show.
TTCdinosaur
Active Member
This. People at work from out of town (zoom meetings!) are telling me how crazy the TTC is.
All the political and philosophical musings going on is part of the problem. Every time we see a problem, we have a crowd that insists we don’t have enough data to be 100% certain of the problem framing and another crowd that insists the problem is so big, that the solution must also be big. There is no GEPO, there is no discussion of a matrix of solutions. Of course to avoid risk, the alternative is stays quo, which we then defend is not so bad - just look at the Americans!
Only cycling seem to have figured a way through this Canadian quagmire with their “pilot” framing.
A country of lawyers, accountants and engineers that cover their asses and blame everything on user error will inevitably not meet the needs of a faster paced and digital society.
TTCdinosaur
Active Member
You are suggesting that a decision to take public transit should require improved media literacy. Do you realize how absurd that would make our city.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
By-laws cover the what, not the when or how. That’s the good thing about them.
crs1026
Superstar
My point exactly. The general inability (TTC, courts, public opinion, and politicians all included) to land on the when and how has created a situation where the by-laws are unenforceable, and therefore are not deterring anyone or anything.
- Paul
Voltz
Senior Member
They have had to deal with people who have killed other passengers with knives, sure they need guns, and can be done, those officers who can't or won't carry them can work in other roles, there are plenty of them in the TTC. Also. If the TTC is too crowded for armed officers then cops should be leaving their guns behind when they enter the system.