December 2025
Toronto Police recently announced that they will be adding eight additional dedicated officers to a portion of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) Yonge-University line. Four officers will be positioned between Union and Wellesley stations and another four between Bloor and Eglinton stations.
While it certainly seems like a no-brainer to add more police officers to the TTC system, given the increasing violent incidents on the system, simply dedicating more Toronto Police officers is only a band-aid solution in many ways. With increasing demands of Toronto Police and the increasing strain on taxpayers to meet the budget needs of their constabulary, the TTC is only one budget cut away from loosing those new “dedicated” officers, and who could blame them? This is why many agencies and institutions like universities and transit services will employ their own special constables, as does the TTC.
But what happens when having unarmed special constables isn’t enough to deal with the escalating crime and violence on TTC property? You call in the police, right? Well, maybe it’s time for the TTC to admit that their special constables should be elevated to full-fledged police officers, or at the very least, elevate them to the same status as the special constables employed by the Niagara Parks Commission. Unlike other special constables in Ontario, Niagara Parks Police officers are fully armed and receive their basic and advanced training through the Ontario Police College, just like all full-fledged police officers do in Ontario.
One common complaint about special constables is their lower training standards, something that could be easily fixed by sending them to the Ontario Police College for training. As for equipping them with firearms, if it’s not a problem for Toronto Police officers to be patrolling the TTC with their firearms, why should there be a problem with properly trained TTC Special Constables being similarly equipped? Unlike cops on TV, the majority of police officers only ever discharge their firearms at a gun range, or to put down an animal, so it’s not like there would be bullets flying around crowded subway stations every day.
The TTC needs to decide if they really want to a safer transit system or not, and what kind of training standards they want for their enforcement unit. By having their own dedicated police service, one that would better understand the nuances of policing a transit system, they would be able to better manage and deploy their own officers, without having to worry whether Toronto Police will cut back on their patrols of TTC property.
You don’t think that could happen? When the Caledonia land dispute was at its height, the Ontario Provincial Police re-deployed officers from all over the province to Caledonia, sometimes leaving (particularly rural) detachments seriously short of officers to serve that area’s needs. I certainly don’t mean it as a criticism of the OPP command staff, but it’s an unavoidable reality that when Caledonia became a priority issue, other areas of the province became less of a priority.
I’m not criticizing Toronto Police either. A dedicated Transit Policing Unit (TPU) was established in 2009, after the TTC’s Transit Enforcement Unit (TEU) had their special constable status revoked. The TEU regained special constable status in 2014 and as a result, the TPU was disbanded and their officers re-deployed by January 2017.
The fact that TTC special constables aren’t armed does limit their ability to respond in situations where a firearm is involved. It should be noted that fully sworn and armed transit officers aren’t a new thing in Canada. Metro Vancouver Transit Police was established as the law enforcement agency for TransLink in 2005. Recruit and and advanced training is conducted through the School of Criminal Justice & Security at the Justice Institute of British Columbia.
VIA Rail established their own police service in 2018, with their officers federally sworn under the Railway Safety Act, as are other federal railway police officers.
With the increasing levels of criminal activity, including violence, and mental health crisis issues on transit systems in many cities, not just Toronto, has brought us to a point where politicians will have to start making some hard choices.
They should also hire more officers too, but that’s another issue.
Sources: Officers to be deployed to a portion of the TTC subway – TorontoToday.ca, Metro Vancouver Transit Police – Wikipedia, Via Rail Police Service – Wikipedia, 8 Taking Action- Toronto Police Service.
