The Transit Police Explosive Detection Dog Team is getting its exercise.

The team was launched in 2010 in time for the Winter Olympics.

By 2024 it had conducted more than 4,500 sweeps at bus loops, and along the SkyTrain line including platforms and stations and "other transit structure," Transit Police Chief Suzanne Muir told TransLink's board of directors on March 26.

"They responded to nearly 100 calls for service related to concerns such as suspicious packages or unattended and the majority, 50 were suspicious packages and 32 were unattended." 

She recalled an incident in late January when a transit rider reported an unattended bag left under the stairs at Stadium Station. "The station was closed and photos were sent through our canine team member who was quickly deployed and confirmed that the bag was not a concern and the station was immediately opened." 

Beyond its own sweeps and patrols the dog team, on over 250 occasions, handled another 171 calls for service "and provided mutual aid to jurisdictional police partners and explosive threats events on three dozen occasions," Muir told the board.

She also revealed that in 2024 Transit Police officers responded to 34 gun-related calls where the "weapon" turned out to be a gun-shaped cigarette lighter.

At around 7 p.m. on Feb. 25, Muir said, a passenger aboard a SkyTrain leaving the 29th Avenue Station reported a man holding a gun.

"Transit Police intercepted the train. The object was actually a lighter. This is just one recent example of reports which Transit Police regularly receives from passengers each month about lighters made to resemble realistic firearms. I will note these have been occurring as well throughout the different jurisdictional areas in the Lower Mainland."

She strongly advises passengers not to carry these lighters onto the public transit system as all reports about firearms "are treated extremely seriously and the resulting police response can put safety at risk. We are all working to look to have legislative changes made around possession of these items as well."

Muir also told the board that for the second consecutive year Transit Police has seen a decline in the volume of reported crimes. and a third year in a row for a decrease in the crime rate "when you account for increasing passenger volumes coming out of COVID."

Some types of crimes have seen increases, however. Robbery, for example, was up from 27 cases in 2023 to 37 in 2024 and there were 72 sex assaults in 2023 climbing to 98 in 2024. Assaults against police also rose from 15 in 2023 to 20 in 2024.

"Those are crime categories we look to focus obviously our efforts, and look to continually decrease those numbers," she told the board.