On Friday, 26 November 2021, 19 UIC member security experts came together in the online meeting of the Sabotage, Intrusions & Attacks security division working group.
This time the working group dealt with the topic of “attacks against employees and staff, their development over the pandemic and possible counter measures.”
The meeting started with a presentation by Laura Petersen, from UIC security division. She shared the results of a recent Network of Quick Responders member survey, conducted within the UIC Security Platform, exploring how Covid-19 has impacted security issues. According to the survey, a majority of answering parties state that there has been an increase in aggressions towards their staff and linked this to the enforcement of Covid-19 related measures. Even though most participants expect a decrease in aggressions against staff once the pandemic situation has passed and such measures are no longer required, other crimes like cybercrime and metal theft are expected to increase.
Afterwards Marita-Anne Grosser and Julika Ramlow of the Deutsche Bahn AG, Karolina Drążek of the PKP Intercity S.A. as well as Hans Martin Rudolph of the VBZ Zurich held presentations about attacks against employees, taking into account the pandemic situation, and gave examples of possible countermeasures. One new, Covid-19 related modus operandi was discussed: that of perpetrators spitting on rail staff with the declared intention of spreading Covid-19. One of the propositions that might have a deterrent effect and that could help to decrease the number of attacks against rail staff was to introduce legal protection for train crews so they could be considered public safety officers. In that case any attack against a member of the train crew would be an attack against a public officer and the attacker would have to face serious consequences.
The meeting ended with a roundtable at which the participants discussed their experience regarding attacks against staff and what kind of measures could be implanted to combat these incidents, such as implementing penal provisions to prosecute spitting attacks against rail staff, as it is the case in Belgium.
All results and presentations from the WG meeting are implemented in the UIC extranet (https://extranet.uic.org/).
The next meeting of the SIA WG is aimed to be held in the spring of 2022, Marita-Anne Grosser, Chair of the working group, proposed to the participants to focus on how to monitor security incidents.
