Crackdown on violence against transport staff as figures reveal 200 weekly offences

  • Tap above to watch video report by Anila Dhami

London transport bosses are cracking down on violence against staff in the capital after figures revealed two hundred offences every week.

A new poster campaign is reminding passengers that both physical and verbal abuse is a criminal offence.

Recent examples of violence include:

  • A young man who violently threatened and assaulted a female Customer Service Assistant during rush hour at King’s Cross station. He was sentenced to 38 weeks in prison

  • A teenager who spat at and racially abused a Customer Service Assistant at Balham station during rush hour in May 2023. She was arrested and sentenced to 3 weeks in prison

  • A 59-year-old man who verbally and physically assaulted a bus driver in Cromwell bus station in 2022. He was arrested and later sentenced to 20 months in prison

Tube poster to help crack down on violence Credit: TfL

Speaking to ITV News London TfL Enforcement Officer Harry Betts said: "Day-to-day on the lower end there's just casual verbal aggression and people swearing as they pass through the gates.

"On the higher end you have people threatening members of staff and people pushing members of staff out of the way to get through the gates.

"It's quite horrible, especially when you're trying to do your job. We're here to maintain the safety of our staff and other people."

TfL says it takes violence and aggression against staff "really seriously". Chief Operating Officer Claire Mann added:

"We are launching a hard hitting anti-workplace violence campaign which is focusing on examples of people who've been brought to justice as a result of abusing our staff.

"It's going to be a poster a campaign.

"Using body worn video, which we're rolling out to all of our frontline people as a essential piece of kit, we're starting to capture some live audio and video examples of people abusing our staff.

"So using that, it's really helping police to take these people to court and to justice."

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