Why would spending
billions of dollars ("platform edge door system for Lines 1, 2 and 4 is estimated at $4.1 billion") on that somehow be the first idea?
As I've pointed out here before, the number of these reported track trespasser incidents has increased from
110 in 2018 to
711 in 2024. Does it seem likely that it might be a new person doing this for the first time, all 711 times?
Does it seem likely that one person is responsible for all 711 times?
Since 2018, and until recently, we saw staffing cut at stations dramatically. It was common for me (a frequent user of Yonge-Bloor station) to see zero staff when entering past the main booths. So, no gatekeeping of fare jumpers and those who might otherwise look likely to cause a problem.
All that aside, there are known, reported declines in average mental health since 2018. The pandemic lockdowns, an ever growing affordability crisis, and ever-increasing costs to treating mental health contribute greatly to that increase.
Because they're often sent to the emergency rooms of already overburdened hospitals.
How about having them institutionalized after they do it the first time? Who or what is being helped by releasing people so mentally unsound and incredibly dangerous to themselves to keep doing it again and again?
There's a reason western nations collectively got rid of widespread institutionalization in the mental health field. It's not exactly cost-effective, creates a system rife for patient abuse and has often leaned heavily on barbaric treatment.
Should we have more hospitals dedicated strictly to mental health, and way, way more support for people with mental illness? Hell yeah. But forced institutionalization isn't the answer.
I have an ex-girlfriend who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in her late teens. On her meds, she is a smart, exceptionally capable woman who works and contributes greatly as a volunteer in the mental health community and services for women suffering from domestic violence.
Prior to diagnosis and unmedicated she was found walking naked down the middle of Haight Street in San Francisco. During one mental health crisis, she actively hit and fought with anyone who was trying to get her help as she believed just passing through her apartment door would lead to the world ending. The latter incident happened post-diagnosis, more than a year after she'd spent a month of forced stay in a psychiatric hospital. She thought she'd already taken a dose of her anti-psychotics one day and was wrong. Missing one dose is all it can take to shift the balance of brain chemistry enough to eventually lead to a relapse.
It was literally night and day between the two. Should she have been forcibly institutionalized for a week? a month? six months? The rest of her life? Or would a proper treatment plan and supports ensuring her meds are taken in her own home environment have worked better?
Oh, and
we're not exactly leading the world in mental health spending, and Ontario alone fares worse than our pitiful national average.
I'm trying to imagine what kind of misguided argument could possibly defend this situation. "Putting them in an institution would be a
mean and unfair thing to do to them"? As opposed to letting them out to keep doing it, until they get killed by a train (and maybe
run over 13 times before anyone notices)?
Don't minimize this as being "mean and unfair"; it's about Charter Rights.
