B.C.’s New Democrats called for better monitoring of transit security cameras after a Canada Post employee jostled with a robber for “four to five minutes” in full view of cameras and no help arrived.
Ravinder Sidhu had his glasses broken and suffered bruises and a sore elbow when he was robbed on the platform at Surrey Central SkyTrain Station at 1 a.m. on July 15.
“This is totally outrageous,” Sidhu said. “What if I had been knocked unconscious or been stabbed?”
Sidhu was on his way home from work where —coincidently — earlier in the day he and other employees had received a briefing on SkyTrain safety.
His bus had not arrived at the loop below the station, so Sidhu sat on one of the platform benches and began to rearrange his bags.
That’s when a man came up to him, asked him for a cigarette and then robbed him.
“I was tackled by this robber,” Sidhu said. “I was jostling with him on the ground for roughly four to five minutes. I was yelling ‘help, help, help’ all the time and not one person came to my aid.”
It was only after the man had scampered off — with Sidhu’s watch and his newly purchased universal remote control — that Sidhu was able to call for help on a security phone.
Yesterday, NDP transportation critic Harry Bains repeated his call for more police on SkyTrain and for the continual monitoring of security cameras.
TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie said having transit police staffing every station or having people watch each of the 900 cameras would be “an enormous waste of resources” at a time TransLink is drawing down reserves to fund the system.
