Cream of the crop: Thirteen new officers are set to bolster the ranks of Calgary Transit
It may not be a glamorous job — patrolling the CTrain line and monitoring fares, dealing with rowdy passengers and arresting people who commit crimes on transit property.
But the competition to become a peace officer with Calgary Transit is fierce. More than 700 hopefuls applied for the job this year and on Thursday, 13 new officers graduated from training.
The calibre of transit officers has steadily increased since 2007, said Brian Whitelaw, transit’s superintendent of public safety and enforcement.
Among this year’s crop of recruits are a former SWAT team member from Australia and a Dutch husband and wife team, both of whom used to be police officers.
“We truly are able to hire the cream of the crop, so to speak,” Whitelaw said. “We had many qualified candidates that we had to say no to, and that’s tough to do.”
Whitelaw credited his team of 97 peace officers for the decreasing crime rate on Calgary Transit property.
“Certainly, our interventions do perform a key role in that reduction of crime,” he said.
Person crimes decreased by 23.1 per cent from the first quarter of 2014 to the first quarter of 2015. Property crimes went down by 34.9 per cent while vehicle crimes dropped by 44.4 per cent.
The 13 officers are replacing positions that were vacated in the past year and will ensure there are enough people for full coverage, Whitelaw said.
“To fully and effectively deal with crime on the system, there are spaces where we require, at all times, two peace officers, and we’re not always able to provide that level of coverage given the existing complement of peace officers,” he added.
Two of the new pairs of boots on the ground this year belong to Kitty Aalders and Maris Kuenen, who moved to Canada from the Netherlands in 2011.
“I came over here because of the nice people and the way Calgary is,” said Kuenen, who first applied for the job eight years ago. “I chose transit because it’s a very developing new area and I really like to work with the people.”
Aalders’ called law enforcement a “family.”
“In my line of work, I like to make a difference for people,” she said.