Police warnings about dating apps a point of tension in Gay Village,
Cops are ‘tying sexuality’ to men’s disappearances, area business owner says
Bruce McArthur’s profile page on Silver Daddies — a niche dating and hookup site targeting older gay men — paints a picture of a reserved senior searching for companionship.
“So many nice looking guys out there but so far away,” the profile reads. “I can be a bit shy until I get to know you, but am a romantic at heart.”
That dating profile, and McArthur’s participation on a number of other matchmaking sites and phone apps, are now being investigated by police in a murder case that has shocked Toronto’s Church-Wellesley Village.
McArthur has been charged with first-degree murder in the disappearances of Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen in the Church and Wellesley Sts. area last year. Police believe he had more victims. Warnings from police about dating apps throughout the investigation have been a point of tension within the Village.
Toronto police said they were investigating dating apps aimed at gay men such as Grindr and Scruff shortly after Esen and Kinsman disappeared last summer, noting both men used dating apps. But some members of the Church and Wellesley Sts. community deride the police’s willingness to issue warnings about apps long before the investigation had advanced to a point when they determined a connection between Esen’s and Kinsman’s disappearances.
“It’s frustrating because there’s an ongoing discourse from the Toronto police of blaming dating and blaming apps and tying sexuality to these deaths,” said Michael Erickson, coowner of LGBTQ bookstore Glad Day Bookshop in the area.
In December, police issued a warning regarding the use of dating apps, citing input from the community received while investigating the two men’s disappearance.
Two days later, police Chief Mark Saunders assured the community there was no evidence that a serial killer was responsible for the deaths.
Though police have stopped short of labelling McArthur a serial killer, they have said they believe him to be responsible for more deaths than those of Kinsman and Esen.
Though Erickson said it’s good sense to use caution with dating apps, he believes the message from police has served to promote the wrong kind of fear in the community.
“They’re telling us not to be afraid of something we should be afraid of and telling us to be afraid of something we shouldn’t be afraid of,” he said. “It ties death to gay sexuality, which is very old rhetoric.” Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray said the police statements are aimed at increasing awareness of risks associated with using the technology.
“By providing such awareness, people can make informed decisions going forward,” Gray said in a statement to the Star. “It was never, nor would it ever be, intended to create fear in a community that may already feel unsafe.”
The security of online dating apps is still a relatively new field, but it’s plain from the research that has been done that some dating apps could put useful information in the hands of those intending to commit crimes.
The American security company Kaspersky Lab posted a report on the potential security threats associated with nine popular dating apps and sites to their blog SecureList in October 2017.
They found savvy hackers could glean a person’s location, personal information or intercept the messages they send on some of each of the apps they reviewed.
Police have not yet released details about their investigation into McArthur’s app usage.