Stop the gun violence
On Tuesday night a man in his 40s was pronounced dead after a shooting in a residential area of Etobicoke. Alarmingly, this type of tragic event is no longer rare in Toronto.
In fact, the man was the 18th person to be shot to death this year in 176 shootings in the city. That’s an 11-per-cent increase over the same period in 2017.
And, according to criminologists, it’s just the beginning in a year that is trending to surpass 2005, Toronto’s notorious “year of the gun.” That year 52 people were shot to death and there were 359 shooting victims.
These deadly crimes will of course lead to calls for the hiring of more police officers. Especially when innocent victims get caught in the crossfire as 15-year-old Jane Creba did in 2005 and Ruma Amar, 29, did in March of this year. But, as understandable as that may be, it’s not the right path. Instead of increasing police budgets and swarming highcrime neighbourhoods with heavily armed officers, as it has in the past, city council should hire more outreach workers who can reduce violence through intervention programs that aid troubled youths.
It’s worked in such cities as Glasgow, Boston and Minneapolis, and it could work here, too — if only city council members would sit up and take notice, says Irvin Waller, a professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa.
They should. In fact, they should have back in 2005, when Glasgow first created its Violence Reduction Unit. The unit diagnosed the problems that led to knife violence in that city, mobilized agencies and public opinion and launched the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence in 2008. By focusing on decreasing violent incidents, rather than increasing arrests, the initiative saw a 50-per-cent reduction in violence among gang members in the three years after the program was established.
No wonder it became a model for other cities, which quickly implemented similar programs. Among them are Boston, which has since seen a 65-per-cent reduction in homicides and shootings, and Minneapolis, which has achieved a 50-percent reduction.
The three keys to the program’s success, according to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, are a zero-tolerance warning to gang members from police, a powerful and inspirational message from a community leader, and a pledge from social agencies and charities that if youths do renounce violence they can get help with education, training and job-finding.
That last promise is critical. As Angela Wright and Louis March, the founder of the Zero Gun Violence Movement, wrote in the Star last year: “It’s an absurdity when young men claim it’s easier to get a gun than a job.”
Sadly, though, in 2005 Toronto took just the opposite approach. Instead of aiding youth it created a police unit called TAVIS (Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy) to saturate areas of the city where violence was a problem, gather intelligence and supposedly win residents’ support.
The result? After a 10-year history of arbitrary stops and searches, allegations of assault and a public strip search in broad daylight, it left troubled neighbourhoods increasingly mistrustful of officers. The program was disbanded in January of last year. Now Toronto appears to be back where it started. There are no quick fixes; the city seems to be well down a path of revenge shootings over gang territory, where one shooting sets off another. But this time, all three levels of government must choose a different path than the one chosen after the fallout from 2005.
To start, the province and the city, which both funded TAVIS, should funnel those public dollars into proven intervention programs that will help youths choose a positive path.
The federal government, too, can help fund these critical youth intervention programs by allotting some of the $327.6 million it set aside in 2017 to fight gun violence.
It can also move quickly on Bill C-71, its long-promised gun control legislation. Though it doesn’t go far enough, if passed it will undo some of the damage the Harper government did on this front when it loosened controls.
This is important to slow the surge in the number of restricted firearms — mostly handguns — owned by Canadians. As of 2016, that number had grown by nearly 50 per cent over five years.
As Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, points out: “Every illegal gun begins as a legal gun. If you have twice as many restricted firearms in Canada, it’s just inevitable that you’re going to see more of them end up in the wrong hands.”
She’s right. While Toronto criminals used to get the majority of their guns from the United States, police say they now get half of their illicit firearms in Canada.
It’s true that none of these efforts will lead to an overnight solution. Would that they could.
But, combined with effective, not over-reactive, policing they are Toronto’s only hope. The city should wait no longer to find the necessary funding to implement these proven programs as quickly as possible.
Lives are in the balance.
According to criminologists, 2018 is trending to surpass 2005, Toronto’s ‘year of the gun’