Métro: Activités criminelles dans les stations

[IluvMTL]

How safe is your métro station?

 

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Montrealers+safe+your+m%C3%A9tro+station/8972463/story.html

 

Quiet stations tend to have more crime per capita

 

Berri-UQÀM, in eastern downtown, recorded 12.5 million boardings in 2009. There were 20.4 crimes per 1 million boardings.

Photograph by: Marie-France Coallier , Marie-France Coallier

 

MONTREAL - For the first time, Montrealers can find out which métro stations see the most crimes.

 

Turns out some least-used subway stops have the highest per capita crime rates.

 

The Gazette has obtained station-by-station statistics after Quebec’s access-to-information commission sided with the newspaper in a three-year battle with the Montreal police department.

 

The figures cover 2008 and 2009, as police only revealed partial information for more recent years.

 

Between 2008 and 2009, criminality jumped at 38 of 64 stations patrolled by Montreal police. At 13 of those, the number of criminal infractions more than doubled.

 

The network’s busiest station, Berri-UQÀM — a transfer point served by three métro lines — saw the largest number of crimes. There were 255 crimes in 2009, up from 243 the previous year.

 

In 2009, 18 stations saw at least 10 crimes involving violence or threat of violence (“crimes against the person”), including Berri-UQÀM (59 cases), Lionel-Groulx (33), Sherbrooke (20) and Vendôme, Snowdon and Jean-Talon (17 each).

 

For every station, The Gazette calculated the number of criminal prosecutions per 1 million passengers who entered the network there.

 

Berri-UQÀM, in eastern downtown, recorded 12.5 million boardings in 2009. There were 20.4 crimes per 1 million boardings.

 

But it was Georges-Vanier, in Little Burgundy southwest of downtown, that recorded the most crimes per capita.

 

At that station — the network’s least used with only 742,000 boardings in 2009 — there were 28.3 crimes per 1 million boardings.

 

Georges-Vanier is a reatlively desolate location, especially at night. It’s next to the Ville-Marie Expressway and no buses serve the station.

 

Beaudry and Monk stations are other examples. Both are among the bottom five for boardings but in the Top 5 for per capita crimes.

 

Click for an interactive map showing crimes in the métro. Reading this on a mobile device? Find the link at the end of the story.

The figures give only an approximation of station-per-capita crime rates. The STM only maintains statistics for the number of people who pass through turnstiles at individual métro stations.

 

That means ridership figures used in these calculations only give an idea of how busy stations are.

 

Some stations have few people entering but a high number of passengers disembarking. In addition, transfer stations are busier than boarding figures would suggest because passengers there move from one line to another without going through turnstiles.

 

Bylaw infractions, including graffiti and malicious damage to STM property, were also detailed in the 2008-09 statistics.

 

In more than one-quarter of Montreal métro stations, there were at least 10 bylaw infractions in 2009, with Berri-UQÀM (378 incidents), Sherbrooke (76) and Atwater (67) having the most.

 

The figures obtained by The Gazette cover the 64 stations on Montreal Island and Île Ste-Hélène. Laval and Longueuil stations are patrolled by their respective police forces.

 

Every year, Montreal police publish crime statistics for the entire métro network, but the force has resisted providing more detailed data.

 

 

After failing to convince the access commission that the data should be kept secret (see sidebar), police recently provided The Gazette with the number of crimes and bylaw infractions at every station in 2008 and 2009.

 

But when the newspaper subsequently requested 2010, 2011 and 2012 statistics, the department did not provide comparable data.

 

Instead, it lumped incidents such as lost objects and calls for ambulances with crimes and bylaw infractions, rendering the 2010-12 statistics almost meaningless.

 

The Gazette is appealing the police department's decision to keep the 2010-12 crime figures under wraps.

 

Police and the STM say Montreal has a very low subway crime rate compared with other cities. Crimes in the métro are relatively rare and the métro's overall crime rate has dropped significantly between 2008 and 2012.

 

Montreal police started patrolling the network in 2007. Before that, STM officers were in charge of security in the métro system.

 

The Gazette sought the station-by-station figures so it could tell readers at which station passengers are the most likely to become the victim of a crime or to witness crimes or bylaw infractions.

 

Making the data public also allows the public to monitor progress in reducing incidents at particular stations.

 

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© Copyright © The Montreal Gazette

Edited September 28, 2013 by IluvMTL

[denpanosekai]

Don't forget the interactive map + charts.

[IluvMTL]

Don't forget the interactive map + charts.

 

Right!

 

See link:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/interactives/metro-crimes/index.html

 

BY ANDY RIGA AND ROBERTO ROCHA

 

In 2010, The Gazette requested detailed data on crimes committed in métro stations from the Montreal police. Three years later, after much legal wrangling, the data was released, but it was incomplete.Numbers by type of offence were only provided for 2008 and 2009. For 2010 through 2012, the numbers are grand totals, with Criminal Code offenses and minor violations lumped together. This makes it impossible to compare to previous years. Below is a map showing some of the numbers we did get: Criminal Code violations per station, and the percentage change from 2008 to 2009. Under it are charts showing general numbers for later years. The Gazette has since filed an appeal with the Access to Information Commission to obtain the complete data for all years.Note: data was only provided for stations on the Island of Montreal, which are under the Montreal police jurisdiction