Police have begun to patrol buses, trains and Proastiakos suburban railway stations in western Attica under a new pilot program designed to combat antisocial behavior and ensure safety on public transport.
Up to 130 police officers, in uniform or undercover, will be deployed during the pilot program.
On Friday, officers began patrols on buses in Liosia, Menidi and Zefyri, where drivers welcomed the measure, according to Fotis Nikolakopoulos, general secretary of Athens Urban Transport Organization workers.
“We had incidents daily and every driver on his shift was faced with many problems. Especially on the A10 and B10 buses, drugs were being taken on the buses. The bus was ‘split’ in the middle in the evenings: the passengers sat up front while there was drug taking in the back seats,” said Nikolakopoulos.
Attacks on drivers were frequent. “With this measure, I believe both passengers and drivers will feel more secure,” he said.
Giorgos Stamatakis, president of the Western Attica Police Union, welcomed the measure as a step in the right direction to tackle a “serious problem.”
“Often, gangs of three or four people vandalize buses by throwing stones and smashing windows. We’ve seen cases where they set up a roadblock, stopped the bus to break the windows and then escape,” he told Kathimerini.
He said people with addiction issues use the A10 and B10 buses to travel up from the city center to Zefyri, Menidi and Ano Liosia “to buy drugs and harass passengers.”
Stamatakis added that it was significant that the transport police are not drawn from local stations in Western Attica, “as is usually the case in such cases, resulting in the weakening of the services in the region and consequently its policing.”