Metro Vancouver Transit Police Chief Suzanne Muir says her officers did 79 naloxone drug overdose “saves” in 2023, up 41 per cent compared to 56 in 2022.
The number of “naloxone events” is now almost four times what it was in 2019, Muir said.
“In some instances we’re seeing multiple applications required to revive the same individual.”
Muir did a presentation before the TransLink Board on March 27, during its first quarterly meeting for 2024. She told the board the crime rate – crimes committed versus volume of passengers – declined for a second year in 2023, with crimes against persons down by 22 per cent and property crimes down by 28 per cent compared to 2022.
“We believe there’s two factors, in part, that contribute to these rate changes. First it’s due to the increase in ridership and secondly, reductions in the actual number of crimes against person and property files in the year.”
As for mental health interventions involving Transit Police, the volume of Section 28 Mental Health apprehensions dropped by 22 per cent between 2022 and 2023, while at the same time the volume of new mental health client referrals rose by 220 per cent, from 10 to 32.
She also spoke about a text service awareness campaign conducted between Nov. 20 and Dec. 15 last year that recorded roughly 9,300 “direct customer interactions’ at 35 activation events, at 25 SkyTrain Stations, “to educate people” on how to use the system to get help from police.
Riders connecting with Metro Vancouver Transit Police. Text conversations up 23 per cent last year compared to 2022, police files down by seven per cent.
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