Saw people running out and one of them said a person was wielding an axe trying to hurt people. Please stay away from St Clair station at present and expect subway delays
Saw the same thing and some people looked at the person like they had a dick growing out of their forehead, and continued along their merry way in to the station.
I'm getting so sick of mentally ill people terrorizing others on our transit system. I feel for their plight but Jesus christ I'm so sick of the constant delays, security incidents, fires from their junk getting on the tracks... I'm tired
Between it being socially unacceptable to voice concern, the lack of mental hospitals for the criminally insane (hospitals are meant to deal with young people freaking out once in their life not the mentally insane) and the fact that the guy who cut off someone’s head on a bus 15 years ago already being free because he took his meds and there is nothing criminal about the actions of someone who is crazy….
Well we are fucked.
Not a lack of hospitals… it’s the ability to ensure people who need care are mandated to undergo care. Bail policies etc are too lenient, and don’t account for mental illness the way they should
We need CAMH to build a mental hospital and we need people to collect these ppl up.
I'm so fucking done with the crazies on the streetcar screaming in my ear, smoking crack or fighting. This is a HUGE PROBLEM
Every so often I get on the subway and there's someone screaming for everyone's deaths.
I've gotten used to it after months and even laugh when I hear it because obviously they are not actually going to carry out their threat, but others around me generally seem to be frightened by direct threats of violence from a delirious woman.
So tired. I agree with you entirely. I don't drive but can afford to take an Uber every day if I wanted, but, my education was in urban planning and architecture. I want to support public transportation as much as I can. These past few years have made it a significant challenge for me. The TTC doesn't seem to care about safety. Every single day now I witness an incident. There is no sense of safety.
A lot of the frustration gets spend on these people who are on the edge, I wish people would come together and put the pressure on city staff and political leaders with the same energy. The CEO of the TTC is fucking up. All our leaders in the city are fucking up. They should be made to know it ☹️ I think a lot of people are tired…
The ttc is actively being destroyed by the ceo. I know people working there, the ttc constables are short staffed and at this point no longer have anyone manning the security cameras. It's a mess. Between this and the ttc failures in general that are happening, someone needs to start a petition to have him fired ASAP. The ttc is rotting from the head.
*Checks time*
Yup, dude on Reddit during work hours complaining about someone using what they ASSUME was a personal call during their work
Fucking hypocrite
Perhaps this is why our productivity is shit aside from structural issues.
I've taken 1-3 calls in 3 years at my job. Some coworkers take multiple calls every single day.
Why is this behaviour normalized? I can understand if you're like a taxi driver or a janitor but it's ridiculous to think ppl can work on theoretical things while having a convo.
Hey man people are going to work at varying level of dedication when it comes to their jobs. It just is what it is. Honestly I couldn’t really care if a security guard answered a couple of phone calls during their shift.
Yeah, if only the TTC CEO would go back to prosecuting criminals and sentencing them to jail when they hurt innocent people. Blames lies on his feet for the current disorder plaguing this country that has also overtaken TTC property by complete coincidence.
While the overall mental health/drugs crisis is not the TTC's fault, many of the decisions made by management at the TTC absolutely compromises the safety of passengers. Just this week the CEO also admitted to knowing about a hydraulic leak and doing nothing about it. Don't make excuses for him.
Proof that addiction and substance abuse is rampant.
In my 20 adult years in Toronto, the past 5-7 years have been the wildest.
One time I saw a guy walk out of the Yonge Bloor concourse by the former jack astors and proceed to drop kick the Canada post mailbox on the sidewalk.
He then casually walked away.
That’s not normal sober human behaviour
It must be due to increasing amounts of opioids in the drug supply. The only thing that's really changed since 2017 or so is that opioids are now in *everything.*
And potency of opioids, if that’s what you’re after, has only gone up.
But we’ve pretty much eradicated the weaker stuff because it’s harder to smuggle, so uhhhhh, that’s a win?
Fentanyl is pretty ingenious substance as far as drug trafficking goes. You don’t have to grow it in a field and you can fit well over 100,000 doses in a standard letter envelope.
The impact on the Afghan opium trade is going to be interesting to observe. You would think they will get undercut and lower their prices, plus the Taliban seems to be genuinely interested in cracking down on it. However, there’s also regional market for opium and heroin in Iran and Pakistan, so it might no fade away entirely.
Opium has always been around there in some
form, but the anti-junta rebel groups have also gotten into meth and telephone scams to fund their operations now
Please remember:
The PROVINCE is responsible for housing and health.
Decades of downloading onto municipalities that lack the tax base has not helped anything or anyone.
To the contrary: the current problems are a direct consequence of recent attempts to "de-stigmatize" and normalize drug use in a misguided attempt to be more "compassionate", failing to realize it's not more compassionate to leave people in a perpetual state of psychosis.
Very well said and very true. I was very much for this failed method of being compassionate. It's been a huge failure.
People who are not themselves don't know when it's time to get help. These people are in their own world.
The current problems are because drug supply chains became sophisticated and modernized which led to them being able to produce very potent drugs at a clandestine level and increasingly crackdown prescription opioids.
We let our citizens become guinea pigs and die rather than let live have a safe supply and go to work.
There is no such thing as a "safe supply" of crack or meth or heroin. These things are never safe. Being 100% free of contamination does not make meth "safe". Go look at the heart, lungs, brain, kidneys, or liver of someone who used a fentanyl-free supply of any of these drugs and tell us how they look.
The "casually walked away" part is the concerning bit.
Nowadays, you quite simply never know who may be walking towards you on the sidewalk, looking mostly normal, but the newspaper box they just walked by told them that you're a hitman the CIA sent to kill them. Now suddenly you have a fist (or worse) flying towards your face out of nowhere.
It's getting exhausting having to constantly size everyone else up when out and about downtown. I've had a few instances where someone who doesn't look out of sorts suddenly screamed in my face, or threw something at the crowd of people I'm in, or, as you say, kicked/smashed a mailbox or newspaper box out of nowhere. It's incredibly starting and unsettling, and it's not very fun having to always thing "OK, guy walking towards me on the sidewalk, he's walking a bit funny though, am I going to have to fight this guy suddenly?".
it reminds me of growing up in nyc where i always had to figure out if i was going to get jumped and robbed or not. in toronto, its just crazy people being erratic instead.
i've seen things that bewildered me because they simply didnt add up to me. like i've seen some guy literally get within a hair of touching a girls face a yell "fuck you!" like she just killed his child and then just proceed to walk away as if nothing happened. the thing that made it crazy for me is ive seen this man in multiple classes of mine at the time and he acted completely normal everytime except there. it was extremely off-putting.
also, it's just a different kind of danger. at least in my experience in ny when someone/some people are trying to mess with you it's usually to rob you and maybe younger kids will just decide to fuck with you. in toronto almost all of these incidents don't even follow reason. like that video of sheldon going crazy on the bus because people are "watching him" when it's completely unprovoked. it gives a different element of unpredictability when the attacker could just be 100% out of their mind and there isn't anything you're doing to cause the behavior and there isn't anything that you can do differently to avoid it.
Tbh it's always kinda been like that and normally I pay no attention or I'm polite about it but sometimes when they set me off I do act a little crazy back.
You have to, you can't show any fear.
It’s about time we deploy a swath of officers to stand guard in these stations. Enough is enough, every station needs at least two armed officers.
Before you call me a bootlicker, yes ACAB etc etc, but I don’t need to be in constant fear for my life when I’m just trying to get to work.
I feel like any form of regular employee being present would help this, too. It’s ridiculous that we just have to accept that half of an entire line can get shut down 3+ times a week because someone gets onto the tracks, never mind the security incidents that seem to occur during every rush hour lately. It doesn’t help that most station entrances have MAYBE one employee in a booth who can’t do anything, if it’s not just completely abandoned.
I see what you’re saying ie people who are trained in dealing with high risk situations should be present, but having literally any form of supervision at all would be a boon too.
The regular employees are present. There's a station manager at each one, they just can't (or won't?) intervene in dangerous situations because it's not worth the liability. Same reason why lcbo employees (or any retail employee in general) aren't supposed to intervene when someone is stealing. Shit situation but it's either that or face massive legal settlements.
Ok, but who's gonna pay for that? Serious question.
-There are 70 subway stations, meaning 140 officers.
-Shifts are 8 hours, subway is open for 16, so you'd need two shifts per day, meaning 280 officers.
-Officers don't work 7 days per week, so add in another ~30% to cover weekends, sick leave, vacation etc., now you're at 364 officers.
-TTC special constable base salary is ~$44/hr with benefits included, so you're plan would cost the city ~$46.7m/year in salaries alone, not including any of the administration etc.
It's easy to just demand sweeping operational changes. It's a whole other thing to actually fund them and implement them.
I hope the system falls apart so that the entire world finally knows that we’re not a world class city.
That and it would be so embarrassing to the politicians that we might *actually* see them invest in the system.
Unlikely. The province and city will miraculously find a pot of money to temporarily round up the crazies for those magical few weeks then let it go back to shit right after.
Look at what they did in Brazil when that country hosted the WC. Favelas were magically relocated in order to build new stadiums, a feat orders of magnitude harder. Shuffling the crazies under the gardiner for a few weeks is a cake walk by comparison
I mean, the force was several hundred officers at one point in the early 2000s, but was disbanded because they were found to be overstepping their authority and acting like police outside TTC property. We've already done this before and shocker, deputizing hundreds of minimally trained glorified transit enforcement officers to act as a subway gestapo with full police powers didn't turn out to be such a great idea lol
>...deputizing hundreds of **minimally trained** glorified transit enforcement officers to act as a subway gestapo with full police powers didn't turn out to be such a great idea
(highlighting mine)
That sounds a lot like "baby out with the bathwater" and very Toronto.
Rather than do a Lessons Learned session and fixing the bad bits, we'll just chuck the whole thing and replace it with <*checks*>.... nothing.
Oh look, now there's someone swinging an axe on the subway and no one is around to protect people.
Shocking.
I've lived in 3 different municipalities since moving to Toronto and I'll be honest with you, I have never seen such an inept municipality or council in my entire life. The City of Toronto government is ineffective at best and is constantly half-assing things to the point that everything is falling apart.
Well that's no surprise, look at who's been running the show. Anyone expect good leadership from Tory? Ford? Chow is doing a *lot* of heavy lifting and making some serious strides, but that's a lot of backlog bullshit to get through.
I feel like it's even worse than that. There's this *culture* of negligence within the City, from the council to the managers. Our last two mayors were objectively terrible looking back on things, but council at the end of the day not just let it happen, but voted to make it happen.
It feels like the City is scared to fire anyone for being incompetent. Council loves to set these wonderful lofty goals to increase bike use, transit use, but they never divvy up the funds to actually make *anything happen*.
It's like a city run by children. Chow is doing her best to fix the situation but I've noticed that even she is struggling because the culture at City Hall is to neglect, obstruct, and destroy. From the interviews I've read in the media with Chow it seems like she wants to fix everything she can, and she has good plans to get it done, but then City Staff come in and fuck up the execution through complete negligence/incompetence.
I mean just look at the Line 3 busway project. Chow got the council support and funding secured *within one year* but the project hasn't started because City Staff/TTC fucked up and **didn't do an Environmental Assessment for the project** stating they "didn't know it was required." Well, these staffers are **supposed to be the ones who know this**. It's their damn job. But was anyone held accountable for a fuckup this large? no.
This nonsense the City has with its staff is the kind of shit I'd expect from my small town of 11k people, not Canada's largest city.
>It feels like the City is scared to fire anyone for being incompetent
They are.
And it's because of unions.
Unions will fight tooth and nail to make sure every single member they represent is protected.
Unions are excellent for workers.
They are also excellent for lazy, incompetent workers who do just enough to meet the minimum duties of their position: sit in the chair, look busy.
Even if everyone else has to pick up the slack? Strength of the union is more important.
And that's a *wonderful* thing that everyone should be proud to be a part of.
Truly I believe there should be a top to bottom firing of every seat from municipal to provincial up to federal. Chow can stay, but we need to replace everyone with more politicians who are for the people like she is.
Chow is literally the first mayor in a long time that I feel is actually doing stuff and not circle jerking fellow politicians and corporate sponsors. She inherited a big mess.
What makes Toronto's situation worse is that we require a lot of added provincial and federal funding to clean things up and that's being blocked at all levels of government.
I'm just saying we've done it before and it just ended up with a bunch of TTC cops running around violating peoples rights. Not saying disbanding the large force was the right move, just that there's no easy solution here. And, tbf, despite the headlines, crime on the TTC (aka Rate of Offence Against TTC Customers per 1 Million Boardings) is actually way down over the past few years and stands at 1.53/million boardings. I know it doesn't _feel_ like it but the TTC is remarkably safe.
I'd need to see some actual statistical evidence and the methodology for your numbers because it doesn't line up with my observations. Evidence will change my mind.
The subway is effectively a mobile homeless shelter at the moment.
Crime is down below 2023 highs and trending lower but not yet back to pre-pandemic levels. Not to be a dick but you can just Google this stuff you know?
https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/data-research-maps/transit-community-safety-data/
1. The data is "reported" not "observed" which can skew the data if it doesn't take into account that people give up reporting things if it feels ineffectual. But that's the only metric they can measure, so we let it slide.
2. The set doesn't account for other variables - notice that Feb 24 is higher than Feb 23, but Mar 24 is lower than Mar 23 (per boardings). What changed? Weather? Events? Police presence? The dataset is incomplete. Over all it appears that "line goes down" but this doesn't measure the trend sufficiently - note that Nov 23 through Feb 24 saw a constant *rise* of issues, not a fall.
3. Comparing 2024 to 2023 may show a decrease, but when we're talking about "lately" we mean within the past 5-7 years, not just the past year.
Is it safer than last year? The dataset is not complete so I cannot firmly agree, but if we take this entirely at face value, yes it is safer. But not substantially. Is it safer than 3 years ago? 5? 10? Not according to public perception.
As for the "not being a dick" statement... yeah you are intending to be one. When you make a claim and someone says "can you prove that" the wrong response is "it's not my job to back up my claims, it is yours". That is almost always the wrong thing to say. If you disagree, please disprove my statement that there is a spinning teapot on the far side of the moon. I will not be providing evidence, as you can just Google this stuff, you know?
Riiight. Basically the crime statistics aren't true because you don't feel they are. Big if true!
Anyways, we all have the internet man. Just Google shit for yourself in the future. Both the city and TTC have crime stats dashboards.
Welcome to North America. Fund transit that moves tens of thousands an hour and can actually provide efficient modes of transportation? No thanks.
Fund a ridiculous highway that'll make traffic even worse due to induced demand? Here's billions of dollars!
Dude, you have to know how this is going to go, once you start harping on someone's lack of knowledge without doing a bit of a dig yourself.
The TTC is partially funded by all three levels of government, with the Permanent Transit Fund (Federal) scheduled for 2 years from now. At the moment the City of Toronto *and* the Province fund the TTC (to some degree). Some of this is via one-time funding. Some of this is the New Deal. Ontario has played with uploading the TTC costs to the province, but seems to have backed away from it. BUT that means it was an option at one point and can be again.
On again, off again, sometimes the province is in, sometimes it isn't, so no we cannot say "it's municipal" and close the book on that.
I am well aware of how the various levels of government work. My point being that the province has the money to provide additional funding. Municipalities are a provincial responsibility as well. When they under fund mental healthcare, they are pushing THEIR responsibilities onto municipalities. This needs to stop.
There’s security guards posted at the entrance at Eglinton station and there’s a homeless dude literally living at the bottom of the escalator. He’s passed out there all day, every day. They don’t secure shit.
I always see the guards at union hanging out just past the turnstiles. Shooting the shit, not paying any attention to the gates, letting the homeless wander in. This needs to change.
I can understand the policy of using transit as a shelter space during the winter when the shelters and warming spaces were full but it’s 29 degrees today. I don’t care where they go but if you aren’t paying fare you aren’t a customer, and even being a customer doesn’t give you the right to harass and attack others.
I really want to know why the City gave up on having cops on the TTC after like what, a week?
It's pretty clear the TTC can't keep the system safe with the resources they have. Council should be doing something about this but I don't expect them to do shit. Most of council doesn't use the TTC and most of council is scared of making *any* decision that would *dare* hurt someone's feelings.
Because it costs a lot of money to have cops in the subway. 1.7m a month ontop of the over billion dollar budget for cops.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toronto-police-can-t-afford-monthly-costs-staff-overtime-officers-on-transit-past-march-city-1.6276828
But think about all the money lost from people not taking transit out of fear, which adds to lost revenue from increased car traffic, and also the added costs of shutting stations down and pulling out shuttle buses every other day
Eh that's around 20 million a year, [which is the exact same budget increase TPS got this year](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-police-budget-response-times-1.7117836).
Agreed. I’m very much ACAB but we need some sort of order as we begin to address the underlying mental health issues we’re all experiencing directly or indirectly in this city.
I say that but I fully expect there will be a video released in a couple days of a cop punting some poor underhoused person’s head…
If I have to choose between cops or my loved ones getting attacked by someone with mental health issues, I’m gonna pick cops. I can still acknowledge that part of the reason we are in this mess is because of their outsized budget.
Things aren’t binary in the real world.
Oooh fair point. My mind wasn’t working when I replied to you.
Let me rephrase: all cops are bastards AND I’m relying on cops to keep me safe while we get real solutions/alternatives in place.
This isn’t a binary decision between either option, you can pick both.
Here’s an idea, we can be aware that our police force is a gang of criminals and demand radical change in that the institutions that were built to protect us.
The system is broken, yes. Let’s fix it. Let’s call for proper training and hiring and promotion of people who want to serve the people of their communities. Let’s stop paying convicted cops to sit at home doing nothing.
Shouting “all cops are bad” and throwing your hands up in the air does nothing to enact any change. Enough of the status quo, demand change. Demand better.
Are you actively trying to misconstrue my POV?
I hate cops, but recognize that they are literally our only option because alternatives have been underfunded. Until those alternatives have been adequately funded, we have no choice but to rely on cops.
Let me try mapping it for you, might help with your empathy.
I don’t support child labour, but I need a smartphone for work and there are no viable non-child labour alternatives. We should create an ethical smartphone company so this doesn’t happen.
I don’t like Pierre Polievre, but I have to vote for him because there are no other viable non-Trudeau alternatives. We should change our electoral system so this doesn’t happen.
I don’t like the cops, but I need them to keep order because there are no viable non-cop alternatives. We should change how we allocate our city budget so this doesn’t happen.
If your only takeaway is that my POV is rich with irony, I wish you the best of luck in your simple, black and white life.
So sorry, I will make sure to leave my privilege at the door and go work hard to contribute to society so that he will receive the best care taxpayer money can buy. Maybe one day he won't need to wield an axe anymore. ^(/s/maybe)
In fact, yes.
We all know how bad they were the last time around. The good news is, that can be a *lesson well learned*. We know what NOT to do this time around. Insist on a powerful watchdog to oversee it all this time, and dedicate a proper amount of resources to holding everybody involved in the system to account whenever a concern is raised.
But this touchy-feely way we currently operate on, just allowing people to poison themselves, hold the rest of us hostage and turn all of our public spaces into degenerate drug playgrounds and garbage-strewn nightmares, *just isn't f-ing working anymore*. I am sick to death of having to bend my life around trying to avoid conflict with people who need HELP, refuse to seek it, and instead, go around the city like zombies looking for conflict and doing whatever the hell they please with zero regard for safety, hygiene or decorum.
I'm ready to vote for someone who will clean this appalling mess up, and I don't think I'm alone in that sentiment.
I didn’t mean to come off *against* asylums. The fact that the social safety net has been actively shredded by the right and quietly atrophied by the liberals is why we’re in this mess.
The only way out of it is by putting a lot of MONEY into programs that DO NOT IN ANY WAY CONCERN THEMSELVES WITH PROFIT, and exist SOLELY for PUBLIC GOOD.
But since that does not directly further enrich the wealthy, it’s not an option.
Neoliberal late stage capitalism machine goes brrrr…
Honestly TTC should stop with the special constable and put cops with guns into the stations. Cost wise its almost the same. Raise the fares or raise the cost to buy ads on the TTC to pay for it. Demand Ford to pay for part of the cost or raise the development fees for the city.
Special Constables would be fine if TTC management actually let them do their jobs. Right now, their engagement policies are so restrictive that they can't really do anything other than stand around and wait for the police.
Unfortunately, current TTC CEO Rick Leary doesn't want to allow the TTC Constables to conduct any kind of enforcement because he is afraid that it might generate bad publicity. He would much rather pass any enforcement activity off to Toronto Police so that they take the heat if an arrest generates any bad press.
This is why as someone who's well below the average male height and weight, I feel the need to carry something to protect myself, especially at night. I can't imagine how much worse it is for women. I'd drive if my parents had a second car lying around.
Saw people running out and one of them said a person was wielding an axe trying to hurt people. Please stay away from St Clair station at present and expect subway delays
I appreciate that the axe wielding is not during rush hour
Did the axe have proof of payment?
The axe is proof of payment…change my mind
“I got yer transfer right here!!!”
🪓 POP! *^proof ^of ^payment
Here's Johnny! (*Jack Nicholson bashes in subway door*)
*please do not chop the doors.*
*Mind the ~~gap~~ axe*
*Careful With That Axe, Eugene*
He did. Axe anyone…
0.02% presto discount if you carry your own weapon on the TTC
Silver lining, huh?
Right? I have meetings in the morning I don’t time for this serial killer bullshit.
I nominate this for the most Toronto post of the year.
Stay calm, folks. It's just Pierre Poilievre, he's there to axe the tax.
Saw the same thing and some people looked at the person like they had a dick growing out of their forehead, and continued along their merry way in to the station.
Holy crap!
“If you see something, say something!” 🥲
I'm getting so sick of mentally ill people terrorizing others on our transit system. I feel for their plight but Jesus christ I'm so sick of the constant delays, security incidents, fires from their junk getting on the tracks... I'm tired
Between it being socially unacceptable to voice concern, the lack of mental hospitals for the criminally insane (hospitals are meant to deal with young people freaking out once in their life not the mentally insane) and the fact that the guy who cut off someone’s head on a bus 15 years ago already being free because he took his meds and there is nothing criminal about the actions of someone who is crazy…. Well we are fucked.
Not a lack of hospitals… it’s the ability to ensure people who need care are mandated to undergo care. Bail policies etc are too lenient, and don’t account for mental illness the way they should
Welcome to Canada.
We need CAMH to build a mental hospital and we need people to collect these ppl up. I'm so fucking done with the crazies on the streetcar screaming in my ear, smoking crack or fighting. This is a HUGE PROBLEM
CAMH needs more money and power to force these people into hospitals.
Every so often I get on the subway and there's someone screaming for everyone's deaths. I've gotten used to it after months and even laugh when I hear it because obviously they are not actually going to carry out their threat, but others around me generally seem to be frightened by direct threats of violence from a delirious woman.
So tired. I agree with you entirely. I don't drive but can afford to take an Uber every day if I wanted, but, my education was in urban planning and architecture. I want to support public transportation as much as I can. These past few years have made it a significant challenge for me. The TTC doesn't seem to care about safety. Every single day now I witness an incident. There is no sense of safety.
A lot of the frustration gets spend on these people who are on the edge, I wish people would come together and put the pressure on city staff and political leaders with the same energy. The CEO of the TTC is fucking up. All our leaders in the city are fucking up. They should be made to know it ☹️ I think a lot of people are tired…
5 security incidents on the ttc alerts Twitter feed within the past hour. I know things aren't perfect ever, but there needs to be more done.
The ttc is actively being destroyed by the ceo. I know people working there, the ttc constables are short staffed and at this point no longer have anyone manning the security cameras. It's a mess. Between this and the ttc failures in general that are happening, someone needs to start a petition to have him fired ASAP. The ttc is rotting from the head.
Already going https://www.reddit.com/r/TTC/s/08e3dpo2yi
I saw a TTC constable taking a lengthy personal call while working yesterday. It’s not unusual. Don’t let any of the employees off the hook.
*Checks time* Yup, dude on Reddit during work hours complaining about someone using what they ASSUME was a personal call during their work Fucking hypocrite
lol correct. But I earn my promotions based on the quality of my work, not how long I’ve worked for a union.
Well said lmao
Anddd are you gonna pretend like you have never taken a call at work?
Of course I have. But ride the TTC frequently enough and you’ll notice things like this are far too common.
Yeah ppl talk on their phones at work regards if you are in public service or not.
Perhaps this is why our productivity is shit aside from structural issues. I've taken 1-3 calls in 3 years at my job. Some coworkers take multiple calls every single day. Why is this behaviour normalized? I can understand if you're like a taxi driver or a janitor but it's ridiculous to think ppl can work on theoretical things while having a convo.
Hey man people are going to work at varying level of dedication when it comes to their jobs. It just is what it is. Honestly I couldn’t really care if a security guard answered a couple of phone calls during their shift.
Security guards can talk and monitor at the same time. I'm talking about accountants, engineers, and other professionals
But you wouldn’t promote someone who did it frequently to a management position. Which is exactly what happens at the TTC. Because seniority.
> But you wouldn’t promote someone who did it frequently to a management position. The constable in your post was a manager?
Yeah, if only the TTC CEO would go back to prosecuting criminals and sentencing them to jail when they hurt innocent people. Blames lies on his feet for the current disorder plaguing this country that has also overtaken TTC property by complete coincidence.
While the overall mental health/drugs crisis is not the TTC's fault, many of the decisions made by management at the TTC absolutely compromises the safety of passengers. Just this week the CEO also admitted to knowing about a hydraulic leak and doing nothing about it. Don't make excuses for him.
You should see my phone, TTCWatch is constantly lighting it up with service disruption notifications every. single. day.
_it's hot today_
*insecurity*
There have been lots of these incidents recently.
I just took the TTC for the first time in two years. It’s exponentially worse than I remember.
And in another two years it will be even more worse
Proof that addiction and substance abuse is rampant. In my 20 adult years in Toronto, the past 5-7 years have been the wildest. One time I saw a guy walk out of the Yonge Bloor concourse by the former jack astors and proceed to drop kick the Canada post mailbox on the sidewalk. He then casually walked away. That’s not normal sober human behaviour
You don’t know what that mailbox did.
The mailbox for sure does.
[удалено]
It must be due to increasing amounts of opioids in the drug supply. The only thing that's really changed since 2017 or so is that opioids are now in *everything.*
And potency of opioids, if that’s what you’re after, has only gone up. But we’ve pretty much eradicated the weaker stuff because it’s harder to smuggle, so uhhhhh, that’s a win?
Fentanyl is pretty ingenious substance as far as drug trafficking goes. You don’t have to grow it in a field and you can fit well over 100,000 doses in a standard letter envelope.
> You don’t have to grow it in a field *cries in Pashto*
The impact on the Afghan opium trade is going to be interesting to observe. You would think they will get undercut and lower their prices, plus the Taliban seems to be genuinely interested in cracking down on it. However, there’s also regional market for opium and heroin in Iran and Pakistan, so it might no fade away entirely.
I hear Myanmar is the new hot spot for this sort of thing, for what it's worth.
Opium has always been around there in some form, but the anti-junta rebel groups have also gotten into meth and telephone scams to fund their operations now
You’re telling me I’ll stop getting several phone scam messages a day if we just legalize opium? How quickly can we start?
Oh man!
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Please remember: The PROVINCE is responsible for housing and health. Decades of downloading onto municipalities that lack the tax base has not helped anything or anyone.
Yes.
It's because we criminalized a health issue and now we have worse outcomes for everyone
To the contrary: the current problems are a direct consequence of recent attempts to "de-stigmatize" and normalize drug use in a misguided attempt to be more "compassionate", failing to realize it's not more compassionate to leave people in a perpetual state of psychosis.
Very well said and very true. I was very much for this failed method of being compassionate. It's been a huge failure. People who are not themselves don't know when it's time to get help. These people are in their own world.
The current problems are because drug supply chains became sophisticated and modernized which led to them being able to produce very potent drugs at a clandestine level and increasingly crackdown prescription opioids. We let our citizens become guinea pigs and die rather than let live have a safe supply and go to work.
There is no such thing as a "safe supply" of crack or meth or heroin. These things are never safe. Being 100% free of contamination does not make meth "safe". Go look at the heart, lungs, brain, kidneys, or liver of someone who used a fentanyl-free supply of any of these drugs and tell us how they look.
Statistics say you're wrong.
Show us the statistics
If you're going to make up statistics, at least put in the effort to make up a number. Science says you're 198.364% wrong.
The "casually walked away" part is the concerning bit. Nowadays, you quite simply never know who may be walking towards you on the sidewalk, looking mostly normal, but the newspaper box they just walked by told them that you're a hitman the CIA sent to kill them. Now suddenly you have a fist (or worse) flying towards your face out of nowhere. It's getting exhausting having to constantly size everyone else up when out and about downtown. I've had a few instances where someone who doesn't look out of sorts suddenly screamed in my face, or threw something at the crowd of people I'm in, or, as you say, kicked/smashed a mailbox or newspaper box out of nowhere. It's incredibly starting and unsettling, and it's not very fun having to always thing "OK, guy walking towards me on the sidewalk, he's walking a bit funny though, am I going to have to fight this guy suddenly?".
it reminds me of growing up in nyc where i always had to figure out if i was going to get jumped and robbed or not. in toronto, its just crazy people being erratic instead. i've seen things that bewildered me because they simply didnt add up to me. like i've seen some guy literally get within a hair of touching a girls face a yell "fuck you!" like she just killed his child and then just proceed to walk away as if nothing happened. the thing that made it crazy for me is ive seen this man in multiple classes of mine at the time and he acted completely normal everytime except there. it was extremely off-putting. also, it's just a different kind of danger. at least in my experience in ny when someone/some people are trying to mess with you it's usually to rob you and maybe younger kids will just decide to fuck with you. in toronto almost all of these incidents don't even follow reason. like that video of sheldon going crazy on the bus because people are "watching him" when it's completely unprovoked. it gives a different element of unpredictability when the attacker could just be 100% out of their mind and there isn't anything you're doing to cause the behavior and there isn't anything that you can do differently to avoid it.
Tbh it's always kinda been like that and normally I pay no attention or I'm polite about it but sometimes when they set me off I do act a little crazy back. You have to, you can't show any fear.
Last year I saw a dude on Yonge street smack a trash can with a hammer so hard that the wood handle split. I'm pretty sure the guy broke his hand.
This is definitely a crazy thing to do. I've seen this multiple times.
Bro in the last two years I've seen so many tweakers go to town with innocent signs and posts.
Meth
We saw a guy on drugs basically lift up the Canada Post mailbox and throw it, it was crazy.
Meth
Looks like a missed this by a few minutes. Then on my way back someone assaulted a random guy at Dundas.
Neododgingbullets.gif over here.
It’s about time we deploy a swath of officers to stand guard in these stations. Enough is enough, every station needs at least two armed officers. Before you call me a bootlicker, yes ACAB etc etc, but I don’t need to be in constant fear for my life when I’m just trying to get to work.
I feel like any form of regular employee being present would help this, too. It’s ridiculous that we just have to accept that half of an entire line can get shut down 3+ times a week because someone gets onto the tracks, never mind the security incidents that seem to occur during every rush hour lately. It doesn’t help that most station entrances have MAYBE one employee in a booth who can’t do anything, if it’s not just completely abandoned. I see what you’re saying ie people who are trained in dealing with high risk situations should be present, but having literally any form of supervision at all would be a boon too.
The regular employees will do nothing. They’re not even allowed to ask people to pay a fare anymore.
The regular employees are present. There's a station manager at each one, they just can't (or won't?) intervene in dangerous situations because it's not worth the liability. Same reason why lcbo employees (or any retail employee in general) aren't supposed to intervene when someone is stealing. Shit situation but it's either that or face massive legal settlements.
We must go to different stations!
Doubt it. Station managers usually just sit in their booth and scroll social media.
Ok, but who's gonna pay for that? Serious question. -There are 70 subway stations, meaning 140 officers. -Shifts are 8 hours, subway is open for 16, so you'd need two shifts per day, meaning 280 officers. -Officers don't work 7 days per week, so add in another ~30% to cover weekends, sick leave, vacation etc., now you're at 364 officers. -TTC special constable base salary is ~$44/hr with benefits included, so you're plan would cost the city ~$46.7m/year in salaries alone, not including any of the administration etc. It's easy to just demand sweeping operational changes. It's a whole other thing to actually fund them and implement them.
Eh, the City is going to burn millions on FIFA. They could at least burn money on making sure people don't get stabbed, shot, or attacked on transit.
TTC during FIFA, when the world gets to enjoy the magnificent world class transit system, best of north America 2017, is going to be incredible.
I hope the system falls apart so that the entire world finally knows that we’re not a world class city. That and it would be so embarrassing to the politicians that we might *actually* see them invest in the system.
Unlikely. The province and city will miraculously find a pot of money to temporarily round up the crazies for those magical few weeks then let it go back to shit right after. Look at what they did in Brazil when that country hosted the WC. Favelas were magically relocated in order to build new stadiums, a feat orders of magnitude harder. Shuffling the crazies under the gardiner for a few weeks is a cake walk by comparison
I mean, the force was several hundred officers at one point in the early 2000s, but was disbanded because they were found to be overstepping their authority and acting like police outside TTC property. We've already done this before and shocker, deputizing hundreds of minimally trained glorified transit enforcement officers to act as a subway gestapo with full police powers didn't turn out to be such a great idea lol
>...deputizing hundreds of **minimally trained** glorified transit enforcement officers to act as a subway gestapo with full police powers didn't turn out to be such a great idea (highlighting mine) That sounds a lot like "baby out with the bathwater" and very Toronto. Rather than do a Lessons Learned session and fixing the bad bits, we'll just chuck the whole thing and replace it with <*checks*>.... nothing. Oh look, now there's someone swinging an axe on the subway and no one is around to protect people. Shocking.
I've lived in 3 different municipalities since moving to Toronto and I'll be honest with you, I have never seen such an inept municipality or council in my entire life. The City of Toronto government is ineffective at best and is constantly half-assing things to the point that everything is falling apart.
Well that's no surprise, look at who's been running the show. Anyone expect good leadership from Tory? Ford? Chow is doing a *lot* of heavy lifting and making some serious strides, but that's a lot of backlog bullshit to get through.
I feel like it's even worse than that. There's this *culture* of negligence within the City, from the council to the managers. Our last two mayors were objectively terrible looking back on things, but council at the end of the day not just let it happen, but voted to make it happen. It feels like the City is scared to fire anyone for being incompetent. Council loves to set these wonderful lofty goals to increase bike use, transit use, but they never divvy up the funds to actually make *anything happen*. It's like a city run by children. Chow is doing her best to fix the situation but I've noticed that even she is struggling because the culture at City Hall is to neglect, obstruct, and destroy. From the interviews I've read in the media with Chow it seems like she wants to fix everything she can, and she has good plans to get it done, but then City Staff come in and fuck up the execution through complete negligence/incompetence. I mean just look at the Line 3 busway project. Chow got the council support and funding secured *within one year* but the project hasn't started because City Staff/TTC fucked up and **didn't do an Environmental Assessment for the project** stating they "didn't know it was required." Well, these staffers are **supposed to be the ones who know this**. It's their damn job. But was anyone held accountable for a fuckup this large? no. This nonsense the City has with its staff is the kind of shit I'd expect from my small town of 11k people, not Canada's largest city.
>It feels like the City is scared to fire anyone for being incompetent They are. And it's because of unions. Unions will fight tooth and nail to make sure every single member they represent is protected. Unions are excellent for workers. They are also excellent for lazy, incompetent workers who do just enough to meet the minimum duties of their position: sit in the chair, look busy. Even if everyone else has to pick up the slack? Strength of the union is more important. And that's a *wonderful* thing that everyone should be proud to be a part of.
Truly I believe there should be a top to bottom firing of every seat from municipal to provincial up to federal. Chow can stay, but we need to replace everyone with more politicians who are for the people like she is.
I agree, we’re long overdue for a political reset in this country. The existing political regime has destroyed the place.
Chow is literally the first mayor in a long time that I feel is actually doing stuff and not circle jerking fellow politicians and corporate sponsors. She inherited a big mess. What makes Toronto's situation worse is that we require a lot of added provincial and federal funding to clean things up and that's being blocked at all levels of government.
I'm just saying we've done it before and it just ended up with a bunch of TTC cops running around violating peoples rights. Not saying disbanding the large force was the right move, just that there's no easy solution here. And, tbf, despite the headlines, crime on the TTC (aka Rate of Offence Against TTC Customers per 1 Million Boardings) is actually way down over the past few years and stands at 1.53/million boardings. I know it doesn't _feel_ like it but the TTC is remarkably safe.
I'd need to see some actual statistical evidence and the methodology for your numbers because it doesn't line up with my observations. Evidence will change my mind. The subway is effectively a mobile homeless shelter at the moment.
Crime is down below 2023 highs and trending lower but not yet back to pre-pandemic levels. Not to be a dick but you can just Google this stuff you know? https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/data-research-maps/transit-community-safety-data/
1. The data is "reported" not "observed" which can skew the data if it doesn't take into account that people give up reporting things if it feels ineffectual. But that's the only metric they can measure, so we let it slide. 2. The set doesn't account for other variables - notice that Feb 24 is higher than Feb 23, but Mar 24 is lower than Mar 23 (per boardings). What changed? Weather? Events? Police presence? The dataset is incomplete. Over all it appears that "line goes down" but this doesn't measure the trend sufficiently - note that Nov 23 through Feb 24 saw a constant *rise* of issues, not a fall. 3. Comparing 2024 to 2023 may show a decrease, but when we're talking about "lately" we mean within the past 5-7 years, not just the past year. Is it safer than last year? The dataset is not complete so I cannot firmly agree, but if we take this entirely at face value, yes it is safer. But not substantially. Is it safer than 3 years ago? 5? 10? Not according to public perception. As for the "not being a dick" statement... yeah you are intending to be one. When you make a claim and someone says "can you prove that" the wrong response is "it's not my job to back up my claims, it is yours". That is almost always the wrong thing to say. If you disagree, please disprove my statement that there is a spinning teapot on the far side of the moon. I will not be providing evidence, as you can just Google this stuff, you know?
Riiight. Basically the crime statistics aren't true because you don't feel they are. Big if true! Anyways, we all have the internet man. Just Google shit for yourself in the future. Both the city and TTC have crime stats dashboards.
Wouldn't it be neat if we got the army reserves to do it like the 1999 snowstorm lol.
Honestly that'd be rad. But also I could see some issues arise if we got a bunch of 19yo kids to patrol the subway lol
Well, we are spending $650M on an Austrian spa so there's at least 14 years covered. Also $10B on a highway no one wants, that's another 212 years.
Welcome to North America. Fund transit that moves tens of thousands an hour and can actually provide efficient modes of transportation? No thanks. Fund a ridiculous highway that'll make traffic even worse due to induced demand? Here's billions of dollars!
Both those are provincial. TTC is municipal. I'm begging people to learn how municipal, provincial and federal jurisdictions work.
Dude, you have to know how this is going to go, once you start harping on someone's lack of knowledge without doing a bit of a dig yourself. The TTC is partially funded by all three levels of government, with the Permanent Transit Fund (Federal) scheduled for 2 years from now. At the moment the City of Toronto *and* the Province fund the TTC (to some degree). Some of this is via one-time funding. Some of this is the New Deal. Ontario has played with uploading the TTC costs to the province, but seems to have backed away from it. BUT that means it was an option at one point and can be again. On again, off again, sometimes the province is in, sometimes it isn't, so no we cannot say "it's municipal" and close the book on that.
I am well aware of how the various levels of government work. My point being that the province has the money to provide additional funding. Municipalities are a provincial responsibility as well. When they under fund mental healthcare, they are pushing THEIR responsibilities onto municipalities. This needs to stop.
Ok, so go lobby the Province for it then? Good luck though lol
And all to just push the problem outside to the door.
There’s security guards posted at the entrance at Eglinton station and there’s a homeless dude literally living at the bottom of the escalator. He’s passed out there all day, every day. They don’t secure shit.
I always see the guards at union hanging out just past the turnstiles. Shooting the shit, not paying any attention to the gates, letting the homeless wander in. This needs to change. I can understand the policy of using transit as a shelter space during the winter when the shelters and warming spaces were full but it’s 29 degrees today. I don’t care where they go but if you aren’t paying fare you aren’t a customer, and even being a customer doesn’t give you the right to harass and attack others.
I really want to know why the City gave up on having cops on the TTC after like what, a week? It's pretty clear the TTC can't keep the system safe with the resources they have. Council should be doing something about this but I don't expect them to do shit. Most of council doesn't use the TTC and most of council is scared of making *any* decision that would *dare* hurt someone's feelings.
Because it costs a lot of money to have cops in the subway. 1.7m a month ontop of the over billion dollar budget for cops. https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/toronto-police-can-t-afford-monthly-costs-staff-overtime-officers-on-transit-past-march-city-1.6276828
But think about all the money lost from people not taking transit out of fear, which adds to lost revenue from increased car traffic, and also the added costs of shutting stations down and pulling out shuttle buses every other day
Those things still happened when cops were in stations. Not enough cops to spread out to enough stations.
Eh that's around 20 million a year, [which is the exact same budget increase TPS got this year](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-police-budget-response-times-1.7117836).
Ah but see they got that budget increase to stop auto crime, which would have become severely worse if they didn’t receive it. Oh wait….
*Sad Toronto noises*
Agreed. I’m very much ACAB but we need some sort of order as we begin to address the underlying mental health issues we’re all experiencing directly or indirectly in this city. I say that but I fully expect there will be a video released in a couple days of a cop punting some poor underhoused person’s head…
Underhoused is a new one
We learn all the time, friend!
lol, you might not be as ACAB as you think. Hilarious.
If I have to choose between cops or my loved ones getting attacked by someone with mental health issues, I’m gonna pick cops. I can still acknowledge that part of the reason we are in this mess is because of their outsized budget. Things aren’t binary in the real world.
ACAB is a pretty binary statement
There’s nothing binary about the statement “All Cops Are Bastards”. Polarizing? Maybe. Definitive? Yes. Binary? Not at all.
If all are bastards, then none are not bastards.
Oooh fair point. My mind wasn’t working when I replied to you. Let me rephrase: all cops are bastards AND I’m relying on cops to keep me safe while we get real solutions/alternatives in place. This isn’t a binary decision between either option, you can pick both.
Sure you can, but it’s a little silly.
Here’s an idea, we can be aware that our police force is a gang of criminals and demand radical change in that the institutions that were built to protect us. The system is broken, yes. Let’s fix it. Let’s call for proper training and hiring and promotion of people who want to serve the people of their communities. Let’s stop paying convicted cops to sit at home doing nothing. Shouting “all cops are bad” and throwing your hands up in the air does nothing to enact any change. Enough of the status quo, demand change. Demand better.
I’m not a lunatic. I want more cops, laws enforced, criminals jailed. It’s not hard, we figured out having a functional society long ago
So we agree, great.
Yeah, I was responding to the other guy that hates cops but wants more
Are you actively trying to misconstrue my POV? I hate cops, but recognize that they are literally our only option because alternatives have been underfunded. Until those alternatives have been adequately funded, we have no choice but to rely on cops.
It’s just rich with irony.
Let me try mapping it for you, might help with your empathy. I don’t support child labour, but I need a smartphone for work and there are no viable non-child labour alternatives. We should create an ethical smartphone company so this doesn’t happen. I don’t like Pierre Polievre, but I have to vote for him because there are no other viable non-Trudeau alternatives. We should change our electoral system so this doesn’t happen. I don’t like the cops, but I need them to keep order because there are no viable non-cop alternatives. We should change how we allocate our city budget so this doesn’t happen. If your only takeaway is that my POV is rich with irony, I wish you the best of luck in your simple, black and white life.
I'm not in constant fear when I'm on my way to work on the TTC.
Good for you?
found the guy thats gonna get axed by some crazy dude
He carries an axe.
Can we agree he is a violent criminal that deserves to be put away for life?
You don't get it, he's a victim of society! You owe him an apology for putting him through this, ok? ^/s?
So sorry, I will make sure to leave my privilege at the door and go work hard to contribute to society so that he will receive the best care taxpayer money can buy. Maybe one day he won't need to wield an axe anymore. ^(/s/maybe)
Leave your privilege, car keys, and children at the door. This message brought to you by Toronto Police.
I wonder at what point people will decide they prefer peace, order and good government to this chaos
What would you suggest?
Arresting and jailing criminals and keeping mentally ill and drugged out people off the streets. You know, table stakes for a functioning society
Oh, like asylums?
In fact, yes. We all know how bad they were the last time around. The good news is, that can be a *lesson well learned*. We know what NOT to do this time around. Insist on a powerful watchdog to oversee it all this time, and dedicate a proper amount of resources to holding everybody involved in the system to account whenever a concern is raised. But this touchy-feely way we currently operate on, just allowing people to poison themselves, hold the rest of us hostage and turn all of our public spaces into degenerate drug playgrounds and garbage-strewn nightmares, *just isn't f-ing working anymore*. I am sick to death of having to bend my life around trying to avoid conflict with people who need HELP, refuse to seek it, and instead, go around the city like zombies looking for conflict and doing whatever the hell they please with zero regard for safety, hygiene or decorum. I'm ready to vote for someone who will clean this appalling mess up, and I don't think I'm alone in that sentiment.
I didn’t mean to come off *against* asylums. The fact that the social safety net has been actively shredded by the right and quietly atrophied by the liberals is why we’re in this mess. The only way out of it is by putting a lot of MONEY into programs that DO NOT IN ANY WAY CONCERN THEMSELVES WITH PROFIT, and exist SOLELY for PUBLIC GOOD. But since that does not directly further enrich the wealthy, it’s not an option. Neoliberal late stage capitalism machine goes brrrr…
Good. I can think of a lot of things we can cut to fund the basics of civilization
There’s a contraption the French invented a while back for such cuts.
Yes?
Yeah - that really worked...
It did. It worked great.
I love just down the street and I heard a bunch of people screaming outside at this time.
Well that explains why Yonge NB is fucked.
Somebody out to get the CEO Rick Leary eh? :s
Honestly TTC should stop with the special constable and put cops with guns into the stations. Cost wise its almost the same. Raise the fares or raise the cost to buy ads on the TTC to pay for it. Demand Ford to pay for part of the cost or raise the development fees for the city.
Incompetency with guns, so they can destroy their fears and bystanders faster.
Special Constables would be fine if TTC management actually let them do their jobs. Right now, their engagement policies are so restrictive that they can't really do anything other than stand around and wait for the police. Unfortunately, current TTC CEO Rick Leary doesn't want to allow the TTC Constables to conduct any kind of enforcement because he is afraid that it might generate bad publicity. He would much rather pass any enforcement activity off to Toronto Police so that they take the heat if an arrest generates any bad press.
I've noticed most of the advertising spots on trains now are blank. You know it's bad when the advertisers leave.
Cops cost a lot of money.
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12$ for early bird parking doesn't sound so bad
There is always so much violence on line 1.
This is why as someone who's well below the average male height and weight, I feel the need to carry something to protect myself, especially at night. I can't imagine how much worse it is for women. I'd drive if my parents had a second car lying around.
Do share. What do you carry? There’s plenty of us undersized folk around
# Weapons call: Axe.
St clair or st clair west station?
This was at St. Clair, not St. Clair West.
The ttc is not safe. Every day a new example.
He just wanted to axe for some advice.