Crime Reduction

Transit Police Service wholeheartedly supports the “crime reduction” approach to policing, and is proactively developing partnerships with the communities we work in to make using the transit system safer.

For many years there has been an expectation that the police deal with crime, and that crime prevention has been about ‘target hardening.’ There is certainly merit in this, but often it has done little more than push the problem somewhere else.

Crime reduction adopts a problem-solving approach to crime, and it takes the concept of prevention to a new level.  It seeks to address the root causes of crime, and to engage the broader community (government, residential and commercial) to form meaningful partnerships that share information and resources to change conditions, attitudes and opportunities that lead to crime.
 
Excellent examples are to be found both nationally and internationally of how communities working together have made a significant difference when a team approach is taken to crime.
 
 
What is Transit Police Doing?
From time to time we will update this page to let you know of the most recent initiatives we are involved in. Here are a few examples:
 

IRAYL
 
Inter Regional At risk Youth Link (IRAYL) is a unique partnership youth outreach program run by Pacific Community Resources providing support and resources to youth who congregate on and around the Sky Train stations in Metro Vancouver.   Youth outreach workers identify and connect with targeted youth between the ages of 10 and 15 to build relationships. Youth are provided with resources, food, and other items as part of a cross regional crime reduction initiative.
 
Program Features:
• Teams of experienced youth workers on SkyTrain, five days a week, 11 hours per day
• Support to find missing and hard to find youth
• Referrals to resources for youth to access needed services
• Cross regional connections with Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, New Westminster and Richmond
• Collaborative relationship with Transit Police and other policing bodies
 
STAR Team
 
The Transit Police “Station Targeted Area Response” (STAR) Team is an example of how we continue to establish formal partnerships with our jurisdictional police colleagues to provide a different and more relevant style of policing for the transit system and surrounding neighbourhoods.  For example, working with RCMP officers from the Richmond detachment, the STAR team is developing a policing model designed to establish close community relationships as the new Canada Line opens up in the City of Richmond.
 
 
Yaletown Community Survey
 
Transit Police has worked closely with students from the Criminology Department of Simon Fraser University and Vancouver Police Department to formulate a neighbourhood survey. The survey will identify community concerns in the area. Transit Police is committed to working with our partners to respond to issues identified by the survey in order to deal with crime and the perceptions of crime in the area.