Lots of media attention on last night’s blog post about the Transit Police wanting a 11.5%, uncompounded, raise over four years.

The union president claims the raise is needed to for two reasons: to keep up with other police forces, and to keep up with the cost of living.

Both are wrong. Other police forces don’t get 25% bonuses for working Sundays (at a cost of $1.4 million to taxpayers over five years) or a “reduced work week” – being paid for 11.59 shifts a year that they didn’t work (on top of vacation and stats).

Transit police are already overpaid, especially given the light workload – two-thirds of what they do are fare checks, and the average transit cop works less than 10 serious or property crime files a year. That’s a slow fortnight in Whalley for a Surrey RCMP constable (step 2) making $65,840 annually. No Transit Police officer makes less than $75,000, and 58 of the 166 top $100,000.

Second, the consumer price index has flatlined in Greater Vancouver. At most, this would translate into 4% over four years.

Further, with fare gates coming in, Transit Police will be struggling to fill their time. Their own audit shows how desperate they are to make work. One suggestion was to have them on bikes, patrolling parking lots. As I wrote in 2012:

Now, no one likes vehicle break-ins. But the audit shows what a minor problem it actually is: “Within or just around the four largest Park & Ride locations… this amounted to roughly one vehicle-related theft every 17 hours,” the audit said. But taxpayers should spend money to deploy transit cops making $75,000 to $150,000 a year to save one car every 17 hours (spread out over four sites)?

The audit cites two mid-1990s examples of how bike patrols can work—but doesn’t mention that private security is a cheaper, just-as-effective option.

Further, these parking lots are actually shared responsibility of local police forces and transit. Why should Burnaby taxpayers pay to police River Rock casino’s parking lot? 

(clipped)If a Transit Police officer did come across a car break-in or a stolen car, he or she would have to call the jurisdictional police anyway. Why not have a private security firm handle that for a lot less money? In fact, that’s exactly what the report by SFU’s Paul Barclay, cited in the audit, researched. But now we need cops making six figures to do that?

The answer now, as it was then, is NO.