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Crime rates were climbing steeply at suburban train stations across Melbourne in the years before Victoria Police decided to strip them of security officers, new data reveals.
Protective services officers were stationed at the city’s 192 train stations between 6pm and the last train from 2010 but, in April, they were pulled from 119 stops and redeployed to the CBD and major suburban stations.
The force said the strategy would allow it to make best use of police resources.
However, data obtained by this masthead shows the number of offences increased by nearly 180 per cent over five years to March this year at the 119 stations that have since lost their nightly PSO presence.
Teams of roaming PSOs now cover several of these smaller stations, riding trains between them, rather than being based permanently on station platforms.
Crime Statistics Agency Victoria data suggests outer suburbs with growing populations face the largest increases in crime among those 119 stations, with Williams Landing station, on the Werribee train line, recording the highest number of offences in the past year.
There were 138 offences at the station in the year to March 2026, double the number the year before.
At Merinda Park station, on the Cranbourne line, there were fewer than three crimes in 2021, but 121 offences in the year to March 2026.
Almost 90 per cent of crimes recorded at train stations since 2021 are non-violent, such as car theft or drug possession.
Crime data released to this masthead does not cover the period after PSOs were redeployed in April. That period will be covered by the next month’s release of Victoria Police’s official annual crime statistics, though concerns have been flagged that crime reports at many stations will have plateaued because there is nobody to report it to, rather than a real reduction in incidents.
Superintendent Andrew Falconer, the architect of the new PSO system, said the redeployment was focused on using officers as effectively as possible to reduce crime.
He said crime rates at stations such as Williams Landing had been largely driven by property offences like car theft, carried out at times when PSOs weren’t at the station.
He said he had seen internal data showing no increase in offences across the network after the PSOs were removed.
“For vehicle theft, in particular, we’ve now got targeted operations on that, and we move between those areas of the high crime, and normally, once we’re able to arrest the primary offenders in the area, it significantly reduces it,” Falconer said.
“We’re seeing a reduction in the [busiest] category 1 stations by that additional deployment [of PSOs], and in the [less busy] category 3 we’re not seeing an increase.”
Falconer said the arrest of five teenagers accused of assault in Sunshine on August 1 was an example of the new model’s effectiveness.
“The PSOs [left] the railway station because they were with police … [to] make that arrest. We do have a number of examples like that now of different significant arrests by having additional deployment during the day,” he said.
The state opposition has committed to hiring an extra 200 PSOs if elected in November, and opposition police spokesman Brad Battin said this would allow the bigger train stations and shopping centres to maintain their new level of coverage, while redeploying officers to suburban platforms overnight.
“Some areas might need patrols a fraction early, particularly if you look at areas that have a high crime rate after school, so get them from 3pm until the last train, for example,” Battin said.
“It’s possible the numbers could steady because there is no one there [at the smaller stations] to make reports to. That’s why it’s really important to have PSOs there, so people do not just feel safe, but they’ve got someone to speak to at the station.”
Falconer declined to answer what impact an extra 200 officers would have, but he reiterated the new model was already effectively addressing the growth areas in transport crime.
In April, the government and police justified the reallocation of officers by noting that there were 79 stations which recorded no crimes against the person in 2024, and that a further 101 stations recorded fewer than six.
Dr Berhan Ahmed hears many complaints about train station crime through his work as CEO of support service Africause, and not just from people who use the station nearby his office in Footscray.
Several weeks ago, Ahmed saw a woman who said she had been assaulted at Noble Park – a category 2 station in the south-east – where there is a permanent nightly PSO presence from 5pm.
“She was at the station late afternoon and approached by a young man and woman and they asked her for money and her mobile phone,” Ahmed said. “She refused and they followed her to the car park, and when she started to shout they just bashed her. She yelled and they ran away.
“She had bruises in her eye.”
Ahmed said the woman came to him after being unable to find anyone at the station to report the crime to. He said he connected her with support for victims of crime.
Other commuters he saw felt so unsafe that PSOs were irrelevant to the decisions they were making.
“Most of them are saying to me they wouldn’t go alone to [stations], they’re saying, ‘I need to go with someone’, rather than relying on police being there,” he said. “If it’s not safe, it’s not safe.”
Falconer urged people to check a new website showing when and where PSOs would be, and that initiatives were under way to prevent at-risk people from committing crimes at certain stations.
“I think one thing I’d encourage people to speak to the PSOs; they very much want to engage with people, ask them for advice,” he said. “We give them crime prevention advice to pass on.”
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