Bus drivers have called for greater protection in the wake of two brazen incidents of violence on public transport.

Attacks and threats to bus drivers and passengers include an assault on an operator on January 9 — and, on Wednesday night, the robbery of a teen by a fellow passenger in full sight of other riders.

In the most recent case, police arrested the assailant, a 22-year-old man, after he attacked an 18-year-old male as the bus came to a stop by Khyber Pass, Warwick, around 10pm.

The robber fled, but was caught nearby. His victim received “relatively minor” injuries.

For the bus operator — who requested anonymity — the incident underscored the increasing dangers of the job, plus the dearth of security.

“We need protection as bus drivers — who’s going to help me if I try to stop a fight?” she asked. “Management doesn’t protect us as operators, and we can’t retaliate. If I were to hit back I could lose my job.”

The robbery happened on a night bus from Watford Bridge to Hamilton after a man dressed in a hooded top boarded her bus near White Hill in Sandys.

“I told him he would have to remove his hoodie. He did, and sat down, and I continued my run.”

The driver said she picked up about six more passengers, including a young man in the Heron Bay area who was using an iPhone.

His assailant “rang the bell to get off at Khyber Pass — and as he was approaching to get off, apparently he must have snatched the other man’s phone. He said ‘Give me your phone’. I didn’t see what happened but they were struggling. I told him I was calling the police — he didn’t pay me any mind. He didn’t care.”

She said she had radio difficulties calling in to headquarters while other passengers called police. The attacker ran off with the phone, leaving his victim with “a couple scratches and bumps on the head”, the driver said.

Cameras are gradually being introduced on new buses brought to the Island, she said, but for now operators are left feeling powerless on their own buses.

“We need to take control back of the buses,” she said. “When operators say they’re having problems with certain people, management need to deal with it. Right now you have to do an incident report and nothing gets done. It just sits in your file.”

She also suggested that Government take away the free bus passes, offered in 2008, to students below the age of 18.

“We need to put the fares back,” she said. “We have too many children being disrespectful to bus drivers and the public. They don’t get up to give senior citizens a seat. They’re rude and obnoxious. As drivers we take a lot of abuse and we don’t get paid enough to take this.

“All Government needs to do to make it easier on everybody is to get all the schools to ID their passes, with pictures on them. It would eliminate a lot of problems as well if they put a curfew on the time that children can use them. Give it a time limit.”

Another driver, also asking not to be named to protect his identity, agreed: “It’s time for us to take a stand — you see drivers getting assaulted, drivers getting threatened daily, and the management don’t have any contingency plan for us. The procedure is to fill out an incident report, but it’s so vague they don’t investigate it.”

The threat level for bus drivers increases markedly after dark, he added, and drivers don’t always report incidents.

In a recent case reported by police, a driver who had exchanged words with a passenger was assaulted by a 23-year-old man as he left the bus in Southampton, at 6.45pm on January 9. In that incident, another passenger came to the driver’s aid. Police later arrested the assailant, who was found with a suspected drug on his person.

After eight years on the job, the driver who spoke with this newspaper said he still loved his work but said threats and intimidation had worsened during his tenure.

“Especially at night you’re dealing with a whole different type of person at that time,” he said. “Daytime you get mothers, children and seniors. At night you have people with alcohol or drugs in their system and they don’t hear you. I have to ease back on being stringent. Sometimes I just hope for the best and say a prayer. It’s crazy.”

Often subject to intimidation, the driver said he’d recently been left “shaken” after having to order a boy off the bus — only to be threatened that he would be punched in the face.

“When a person does threaten you, they’re not going to tell you who they are. You write an incident report but it doesn’t result in anything being done.”

Asked if he wanted security added, or a change in the law giving bus drivers more powers to defend themselves, the bus operator replied: “What we want is more supervisors and management to stand behind us. Stop cowering and making us feel like we’re inept.”

He said passengers on the bus “look out for us more than our employers do”.

As for cameras, he said: “They can hopefully identify the person but that’s not going to stop me from getting my throat slashed.”

Also opposed to student passes, the driver said: “The free ride makes it worse for us. They can stay on the bus all day, up and down. They need to repeal it, or they need to customise the pass for the child who uses it. We have dozens of passes sitting up in the office. The children don’t care about them.”

A third driver who spoke to The Royal Gazette said it was “just a matter of time before someone gets shot on the bus”.

“All the buses need to be fitted with the cameras,” he said.

“Also, to take it a step further, cameras need to be monitored by the police, meaning whenever there is a shooting, an attack or a robbery, a bus is always in the area. I think in the past where there have been incidents, if we’d had the cameras, the police could have used that footage to solve many crimes of vehicles and or people leaving the scene.”