A Toronto man says he was left disappointed by the actions of TTC passengers after he witnessed a man take a cell phone picture up a woman’s skirt on the 63 Ossington bus last Tuesday.

“It was so bold the way he had done it, and I looked over and I noticed a few other passengers had noticed as well,” says Mark Piercey who was riding the bus around 9pm. “I confronted him I said ‘you know we all saw you take that photo, right?’ ”

Piercey says the woman who had been targeted realized what had happened, and quickly exited the bus. But the interaction didn’t end there.

“I could see in the reflection of the window that he was sending the photo, and that made me upset,” says Piercey. “I looked around and no one really wanted to do anything, so I thought, I’m just going to stand up and report it to the driver.”

Piercey says he was encouraged when the driver pulled over the vehicle, called his supervisor, and confronted the man, who refused to hand over his phone.

But after a few minutes on the side of the road, he realized the bus full of passengers weren’t exactly applauding his actions.

“We could hear people huffing and puffing, and there was a lady at the back of the bus kind of explaining the story […] and she yelled out to me ‘it’s not your skirt, so why the hell do you care?’ ” recounts Piercey. “Honestly, it was a big shocker. I didn’t expect it to unfold that way.”

Piercey says with the crowd of riders growing restless, he decided to exit the bus, even though it wasn’t his stop. The man he’d accused was still on board and the driver assured him the TTC would be looking at the bus’ surveillance video.

But CityNews has learned the TTC didn’t escalate the situation any further, and the bus continued on its route shortly after the call. A TTC spokesperson told CityNews that’s because the incident was called in as a man taking photos of people without permission, and not as a case of sexual harassment.

“We have no evidence to indicate that the operator was aware that was the issue,” says Susan Sperling, Manager of Corporate Communications at the TTC. “He acted appropriately; he phoned it in, told his supervisor there was someone taking photos. He was asked to stop the bus. He did that, and they stopped.”

Sperling says if any passengers, or the driver, had felt there was some imminent danger, the driver would have been instructed to issue a call for assistance. She says in this case, the driver and the passenger, did the right thing.

“People are busy, and expect service, and they want service without delay. But safety is absolutely the number one priority.”