TORONTO -- Having Toronto cops riding the red rocket is a long way off but the TTC isn't ruling it out.

Toronto Transit Commission spokesman Brad Ross said yesterday the service is working hard to tackle employee safety -- installing cameras and security shields on vehicles -- but has no plans to put police on board.

"We're not there yet," Ross said. "There's a couple of issues, one is around cost, but I think we do need to step back and take a look at how the TTC is policed and how safety and security is conducted on the system."

The recommendation came from the Safety Systems and Culture Assessment report, obtained by the Toronto Sun this week. Behavioral Science Technology Inc. delivered the report in June after surveying employees in March.

The firm recommended cops and TTC special constables be placed on commission buses and streetcars to help combat attacks on drivers.

2,000 VEHICLES

"We have over 2,000 service vehicles, so is it practical and necessary to put a police officer or a special constable on every vehicle? I don't know," Ross said. "But we are doing other things to help protect our employees and we're doing things to help educate our own customers with respect to safety on the TTC and what they can do."

The report states more than 1,700 assaults or threats against TTC operators may have gone unreported in the past five years. That's in contrast to the TTC's internal numbers of operator assaults from 2003 and '07. While the commission had only 1,886 assaults reported, the BST survey found 3,649 employees reported being assaulted or threatened.

BST goes on to recommend that, alongside the cops, the TTC should install cameras on buses and aggressively pursue the prosecution of people that assault operators.

Ross said that alongside the growing force of 106 special constables, the TTC has equipped 1,400 buses and streetcars with cameras and is putting shields around bus drivers.