City works to address drug issues on Edmonton public transit

Edmonton City Council has been making changes to transit for the past year in an attempt to make it safer, and with colder weather soon approaching, councillors anticipate even more changes will be needed.

The City of Edmonton says it’s receiving more calls this year over last related to transit, both violent and non-violent.

The calls haven’t been as severe, though, compared to last year. Crime severity on transit is down nearly 12 per cent, according to the city.

Most calls on transit are related to drug use.

The city says it’s working with the Edmonton Police Service and the Bent Arrow traditional healing centre to address drug issues by creating Community Outreach Transit Teams, also known as COTT.

Duane Hunter, the city’s director of public safety, says it will take some time for these teams to make an impact.

"These things have been put in place, but it takes up to 18 months to recruit all the police officers that need to come into these spaces," Hunter said Tuesday at City Hall. "Our COTT teams were just fully filled recently. It took that long to hire everyone. It takes a lot of time to build this framework to be successful in these spaces.

"Now that we have the framework in place, we want to start addressing the problematic behaviours that lead to other behaviours that make people feel unsafe in these spaces."

Hunter says he’d like to see the crime severity rate decrease. He adds that an increase in calls isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it means riders trust the work the city is doing.

He also says the city needs more shelter space as we approach winter so not as many people are sleeping and living in transit centres.

A transit representative says ETS will once again provide free rides for vulnerable Edmontonians to shelters during extremely cold days this winter.