OC Transpo security: Supervisors; safety for women,

Ottawa groups say western city far better at dealing with sexual assault on its property

OC Transpo could learn some lessons from Vancouver when it comes to dealing with sexual assaults on its property, say women’s groups in Ottawa.

Groups such as Hollaback and Women Initiatives for Safer Environments have long called for action to prevent attacks against women on the transit system.

OC Transpo says it plans to better promote its safety strategies and encourage more people to report incidents through a public awareness campaign, but few details of that plan have yet to be made public.

When such concerns were raised in Vancouver, the head of Translink security set out to find ways to improve safety. Researchers found that women were one of the four most frequently victimized demographic groups.

Researchers turned to places like Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles to look at transit-related crime trends. Consistently — across all systems — women, youth, seniors and people with disabilities were more often victims of crime than any other group, said Translink chief of- ficer Neil Dubord.

Translink immediately took that research and initiated a crackdown on sexual assaults on its massive transit system. More than anywhere else in Vancouver, transit property showed high rates of specific types of sexual assaults, including groping and frotteurism, which is when people — usually on packed buses or trains — rub their pelvises against unsuspecting passengers.

“We found that we were seeing those types of offences more often in the system than anywhere else (in the city),” Dubord said. “We also found that these are universal patterns in all transit systems.”

Dubord’s team also launched a public awareness campaign directed specifically at students for whom English is a second language. Re- search showed this specific demographic was not reporting crimes. Whether it was a language barrier or a fear that nothing would be done about the incident, women were not calling in, Dubord said.

To encourage more reporting, information was shared with classes throughout the Greater Vancouver area, letting people know whom they could contact, if they needed to report a crime.

TransLink also plans to create a service that allows people to report incidents simply by texting a message to security, and they want to launch a new app for smart phones that passengers can use to report any issues they see or experience.

Dubord is also creating a chief’s council, which will include a host of stakeholders who will meet regu- larly to come up with best practices to improve safety. Transpo similarly meets with women’s groups in Ottawa who have been lobbying to improve its security, but those groups say they have largely felt ignored by the transit provider.

Hollaback director Julie Lalonde said she would like to see a public education campaign comparable to the one done in Vancouver. Her group raised the issue earlier this year after surveying passengers who reported sexual assaults on OC Transpo property.

“When we approached them early this year, the issue wasn’t yet on people’s minds, so they could have reacted proactively and been a leader,” she said.

“Now, at the very least, they should catch up.”