A long-awaited police station is coming to Brussels-Midi train station, but not as its advocates had hoped.
After months of talk, police have set up an office at Brussels-Midi train station to cope with high levels of crime. The office is managed by the railway police and has reopened after 15 years of inactivity. Located in the central hall just next to the station entrance, it began a trial period on Wednesday and is not yet operating officially.
Once the trial period ends, train passengers may ask crime-related questions and file complaints to police officers on duty.
"We would have preferred to have a proper police station inside Brussels-Midi Station," mayor of Saint-Gilles Jean Spinette (PS) told SudInfo. "However, the presence of police officers in this branch will help to reassure passengers, take complaints on the spot and intervene in emergencies."
Another larger police station will open 500 metres away in Anderlecht some time next year.
Train stations are crime hotspots
Outgoing Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open VLD) announced the station's reopening in September 2023 amid a wave of panic about rising levels of violent crime and drug use in the area. Initially planned for "the end of summer", no explanation about the delay was ever provided.
The station was originally intended to be open from 05:00 until 01:00 every day but this has not been confirmed since the trial period began on Wednesday.
Spinette has called for the train station's security to be outsourced given its central importance to international travel (the Eurostar terminal is located there). For this reason, he argues that it deserves the same treatment as Zaventem airport in terms of police presence.
Train stations attract crime because they are "convergence settings", criminology professor at UGent Jelle Janssens told The Brussels Times in July. Homeless people, transmigrants, undocumented people and other individuals living in extreme precarity end up in a site that leads into, out of and around the country. They are then targeted by drug dealers, either to sell or consume illegal substances.
