Winnipeg police say crime was down on transit during the 15 weeks last year when a crime-reduction strategy was being trialled.<\/p>\n
The Winnipeg Police Service says its violent crime intervention strategy \u2013 in effect from Sept. 17 to Dec. 31, 2025 \u2013 resulted in a 15.1 per cent decrease in total crimes when compared to the same period in 2024.<\/p>\n
Broken down by category, there was an 18.2 per cent drop in violent crimes and 15.2 per cent drop in property crimes, according to the police data. <\/p>\n
Police say there was also a 17.1 per cent decrease in calls for police service by Winnipeg Transit \u2013 from 1,259 reports to 1,044.<\/p>\n
The initiative put an emphasis on \u201chigh-visibility policing, targeted enforcement, and proactive presence on buses, in transit corridors and at bus stops,\u201d police explained in a news release.<\/p>\n
Winnipeg police say officers spent 143 hours riding on buses; 101 hours on foot at bus stops and other transit locations; and 36 hours of marked cruiser car patrols.<\/p>\n
Officers were involved in 442 separate \u201cengagements,\u201d which led to 12 criminal code arrests and 98 98 fare evasion enforcements.<\/p>\n
Police say the crime-reduction initiative was implemented on transit following growing concerns and incidents of violence and disorder.<\/p>\n
WPS Chief Gene Bowers told CityNews last week that police are continuing to patrol public transit despite the pilot project having ended in December.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have made some arrests on the transit buses, particularly in the Unicity area and it\u2019s something we\u2019ll continue to do,\u201d Bowers said. \u201cWith our rapid response team coming out, that\u2019s something definitely we are going to address.\u201d<\/p>\n
The WPS says \u201csignificant work is still required\u201d to achieve long-term results, though Bowers previously explained the police service is not considering creating a transit unit within the force \u2014 despite calls to do so coming from Coun. Evan Duncan<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have to be some conversations regarding funding, and we\u2019ll have to inquire further members to initiate something like that,\u201d Bowers said last week. \u201cBecause currently we don\u2019t have the members to be able to initiate a transit police arm within WPS.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Winnipeg police say crime was down on transit during the 15 weeks last year when a crime-reduction strategy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-529571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}