EDITORIAL: Lessons from our city’s violent year
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We hope Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders is correct that 2018 was a unique year in terms of the record number of homicides and growing gun violence.
But our concern is that our politicians are tying the hands of police when it comes to combatting violent urban street crime, because they’re terrified of being falsely accused of racism by anti-police activists.
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That’s not in the best interests of the law-abiding citizens of Toronto, including the black community, because we’re all vulnerable to being caught in the crossfire when black urban street gangs are gunning each other down on our streets.
In explaining the record number of homicides this year, 96 to date, eclipsing the previous record of 89 in 1991, Saunders noted three horrific but unusual events — the Yonge St. van attack, the Danforth Ave. shooting and the charging of an alleged serial killer in Toronto’s gay village.
Saunders rightly noted police are the last resort when it comes to fighting violent urban crime and cannot eliminate its root causes.
Also, that police must improve their efforts to reach out to all vulnerable communities in order to fight crime effectively.
But when the Toronto District School Board irresponsibly expels police resource officers from schools, even though its own survey showed most students, teachers and parents supported them, that’s not acting in the best interests of the people of Toronto, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding.
Ditto politicians who shut down the police force’s anti-gang Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS.)
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Ditto Ontario’s defeated Liberal government which eliminated street checks (carding) — a basic tool of intelligence gathering — due to allegations of racism, by putting so many restrictions on them, they became ineffective.
It should have enacted a workable street check policy that protected the rights of black citizens.
Police are also under scrutiny by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which argues the force is systemically racist because it disproportionately targets and criminalizes the black community.
Racism exists in policing and must be combatted.
But for the OHRC to dismiss any possibility that what also influences the statistics is that a small minority of the black community is disproportionately involved in violent urban crime, is unfair to the police.
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