Security Surge for Brussels' Public Transport

On Saturday 7 April, a STIB controller was beaten to death shortly after he arrived to help a colleague bus driver that was involved in a minor collision with a car. Public Transport service came to a halt due to an immediate strike of the STIB staff, demanding improvements in the area of security.

The STIB management, unions, police force, the Brussels Regional government and the Belgian federal government agreed on an enhanced security package that includes the following:

• 400 police officers will be added to the Brussels Capital force, and will be dedicated to the public transport system.
• Of these 400, 140 will be deployed immediately, originating from a federal reserve team. The rest of the group will arrive with the regular inflow of newly trained police officers.
• Certain security competences of the STIB security agents will be reinstalled, including the right to ask for people’s ID, and to withhold wrongdoers for two instead of half an hour until the police arrives.

These measures go together with other efforts of the STIB, including the transition to a closed, gated metro-system instead of the current open system.