Charles Dixon’s legs are shaking as he stands for the first time at the same Edmonds SkyTrain bus loop stop since having his face punched in by a passenger on Feb. 15.Dixon has been a bus driver for 25 years; he wants to keep doing it, but the assaults on drivers are too common, and though he has been assaulted before, this latest one was unnerving.
When Dixon, a Burnaby North graduate whose parents still live in the house he grew up in, pulled his 106 New Westminster Station bus up to the loop that day about 40 people were lined up waiting to get on. As they filed through the front doors, one line jumper wiggled his way on board through the back doors where people were getting off.
Dixon says he politely asked the man to exit and wait his turn.
“Instead of listening to me, he ran up the aisle, turned to me and confronted me,” recalls Dixon during an interview in which two drivers came over to give their best wishes to him and their two cents on the subject of violence against bus drivers.
He asked him again, but the man didn’t leave.
He asked a third time, and the passenger replied, “Go ahead, press your little red button for help.”Dixon got back in the drivers seat and didn’t see it coming—a punch that crunched the right side of his face.
“He hit me so hard it twisted my head and the left side of my head ended up on the driver’s side window,” says Dixon.
He straightened up half expecting more punches, and told his 24-year-old son Aaron—who was riding along to spend some time with his father—to get some others and follow the assailant and to call 911. They tracked him down, but not before Aaron, a Simon Fraser University student, was hit with a piece of wood.
Last month Del Louie, 21, pled guilty to assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon. His sentencing hearing was to resume Friday (Dec. 16) but it was rescheduled for Feb. 7.
The damage to Dixon was severe. With one blow he got a concussion, mild to moderate brain damage and an orbital bone broken in two places. In March, he had a plate inserted below his eyes with two screws on the bone to secure it. In May, doctors put another two screws in to keep his eye in place, and he still has no feeling in the right side of his nose and right upper lip.
“I feel like I’ve had a cold for the last 10 months,” he says.
Dixon was so distraught that for 10 weeks he took a taxi from his home in Langley to a back treatment clinic in Surrey because going by bus on his first visit was too traumatic. He couldn’t handle the noise and motion of the bus so he rode with both fingers in his ears and his eyes closed.
Assaults a concern: union
Although Dixon’s damage is dramatic, incidents like it are not rare. Operator assaults had been on a downward trend from the 242 reported in 2006 to 118 last year. But they’re on the rise again with 136 and counting in 2011 as of Nov. 30, and though it’s not at historic highs, the bus union says it’s still a serious problem.
“There are days where I open up my email and there are two or three assaults in one day,” says Gavin Davies, vice-president of the Canadian Auto Workers local 111, which has its office on 12th Street in New Westminster.
He says frequently drivers are the target of ominous warnings of “I’m going to get you, I know where you work” or getting spat on.
“Those can be more insidious than getting punched because then you’ve got to deal with contracting hepatitis or any other disease,” says Davies. “They never know when they’re going to run across these people. The threat of potential assault weighs heavily on our operators.”
CAW and Coast Mountain Bus Company (CMBC) formed a joint committee to tackle and monitor the problem.
“The company views it as one assault is too many,” says CMBC spokeswoman Catherine Melvin. She says fare disputes are one of the primary issues as well as belligerent or intoxicated passengers, congestion and overcrowding on routes.
Not Dixon’s first assault
The punch was not the first physical assault Dixon has suffered. That came on Feb. 13, 1987 when he asked a young man to stop spitting sunflower seeds on the floor. The response was a punch to the nose.
Between the first and last assault there were 10 others on Dixon, and that doesn’t count an incident that almost killed him.
On the night of April 5, 2005 he was driving the 135 Burrard bus that goes to SFU.
Two young men and three young women got on. Two paid, three didn’t. He walked back and told them they had pay and he headed back to his seat.
When they began to approach him, one of them menacingly wielding a skateboard, Dixon phoned for assistance and pushed the button to activate an audio tape to record the encounter.
Dixon says he saw the skateboard coming down on him, but before it struck he told the youth the tape was on and the conversation was being heard at the dispatch office. Although the youth stopped before hitting Dixon, he got really angry at that point.
“The four friends stood between him and me and dragged him off the coach. By that time I was shaking from head to toe. I literally was a basket case. I couldn’t finish my shift,” says Dixon.
After the passengers were put on another bus, he tried to drive back to the Burnaby depot but had to be taken to St. Paul’s emergency because of chest pains. He was released, but a day later he was in the intensive care at Langley Memorial Hospital where he stayed for five day and then had an angiogram at Vancouver General.
The cardiologist said to him, “Mr. Dixon, you really should have died.”
It took him 13 months to return to work. The skateboarder got six months probation.
Stronger sentences?
To reduce incidents like those, Dixon, Davies and the company want the federal government to legislate minimum sentences for assaults on workers, not just bus drivers. Davies says violence against bus drivers in U.S. cities is not as great as here because there’s a penalty there.
“We have passengers who absolutely beat our drivers. They don’t do jail time, they’re just told not to take a bus,” says Davies.
Even though there are calls for increased police and security presence on transit, and both would welcome it, Davies realizes it may not be the solution for a couple of reasons.
“The problem is the security is as toothless as we are,” says Davies while acknowledging there’s a cost factor.“Their numbers are nowhere near where they need to be to provide a police service for a transit system.”Says Dixon, “the ultimate solution would be to put us in cages.”
However, that idea doesn’t go over very well with Dixon’s colleagues. Davies says a survey of bus operators showed more than 60 per cent opposed a partial barrier, and over 55 per cent were against a full cage because they like the interaction with passengers.
“Locking us up behind cages is not taking care of the problem,” says Davies.
Even though he says many buses in Europe have cages there are still assaults over there. “If someone wants to get at a bus driver they’ll get at a bus driver, they’ll just wait until the end of the line.”
Davies also points out it would be difficult to retrofit most of the company’s fleet.
One alternative, he says, is an educational program to teach operators how to diffuse situations. For many drivers like Dixon, says Davies, the last piece of training they got was 20 years ago.
“Many members may have the opportunity to disengage and not even realize it,” says Davies.
A year of life, stolen
Back at the Edmonds loop, Dixon shrugs his shoulders when asked why he wants to continue driving buses.“I enjoy it. Imagine all the wonderful people that board our buses,” says Dixon.
“I thought everybody was nice, but it’s not the case. It’s a small section of society that do what they want when they want. They don’t care about the implications.”
Although he’s scheduled to undergo a third surgery to fix his nose, Dixon is aiming for a part-time return to work soon.
“Eventually I want to come back in this loop as a transit operator driving my bus,” says Dixon. “With one punch this kid has taken one year of my life away and he’s changed my life forever.”
He says 25 years ago, his father told him not to not become a transit operator.
“I guess he knew something that I didn’t.”