No big bump in crime rate from Evergreen Line extension, say Coquitlam Mounties

It’s been more than a year since the Evergreen Line extension was added to TransLink’s SkyTrain network, and Coquitlam RCMP says so far, it doesn’t seem to be spreading criminal activity.

“We’ve only seen a two per cent increase in overall crime. That compares to a 25 per cent increase in people using transit,” said Cpl. Michael McLauchlin citing 2016 and 2017 statistics.

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“What we looked at in looking at these numbers was the crime that happened near stations in the neighbourhoods in areas right around the stations themselves. That would be where you’d have the most people moving through.”

McLauchlin said that Mounties have deployed a new Uniformed Crime Reduction Unit (UCRU) to patrol areas around SkyTrain stations on foot and by bicycle, and have been working collaboratively with transit police.

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He chalked the encouraging crime numbers up to UCRU’s work.

“[It was] created largely to do extra patrols, to do extra policing around the SkyTrain stations. That’s what they’ve been doing and we’re hoping that in part that’s one of the reasons that crime numbers are so low so far.”

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McLaughlin says the crimes documented in the statistics are property crime, as well as “person crimes,” which he described as a crime in which someone is directly affected, as an assault or robbery.