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A wall of monitors broadcasts live images from across the darkened city.

The locations on the screens rotate steadily under the control of operators who can zoom in on particular areas as needed.

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On this night, a camera casts its gaze down over the intersection of Bank Street and Fifth Avenue in the Glebe, where a devastating fire hours earlier has destroyed seven businesses. Traffic is pinched into two lanes.

Here inside OC Transpo’s sophisticated communications centre on Belfast Road, a pair of operators quietly work, keeping in constant touch with bus drivers out on the road.

Off to one side, behind a wall of opaque glass panels, is the transit law-enforcement headquarters, the thrumming heart of OC Transpo’s security operation.

“This is the stuff you don’t see from outside,” says Gord Robinson, the chief of the transit law team. He’s agreed to give the Citizen a tour of the operation as well as a first-hand look at how his officers keep the peace on the city’s transit system.