Gun violence plan gets city council nod

The $44-million scheme includes ShotSpotter controversial technology

A hastily drawn plan to combat recent gun violence was approved after a daylong debate at city hall on Tuesday, in the wake of Sunday’s deadly shooting on the Danforth.

Councillors approved the $44-million plan, five-year plan with few major amendments. It included the controversial listening technology called ShotSpotter.

The plan was developed by city staff before Sunday’s violence, and came as Mayor John Tory and police Chief Mark Saunders reacted to a modest increase in the number of shootings this year. (There have been 228 shootings so far in 2018, including Sunday’s violence, compared to 205 at the same point in 2017 and 208 in 2016.) The plan’s entire budget relies on federal and provincial funding that has not yet been approved.

If funding is provided, more than $8 million will be spent in 2018: just over $1 million on community initiatives, including $500,000 in one-time funds for established programs working with atrisk youth in priority neighbourhoods and curbing gang violence, and $7.4 million for stepped-up enforcement and surveillance, including 40 new CCTV cameras.

Tory and a majority of councillors supported a motion from Councillor Joe Cressy asking the federal government to ban the sale of handguns in Toronto and asking the provincial government to ban the sale of handgun ammunition.

The mayor urged councillors to support the package as a whole, saying Saunders had requested the ShotSpotter technology, which is said to be able to detect the sound of gunshots and report it in real time to police.

“Chief Saunders is my police expert,” Tory said on the council floor. “This is what I want to give the chief because this is what he says he needs in order to do the job.”

Much of the concern in the council chamber Tuesday focused on ShotSpotter. Tory proposed the implementation of that technology at an earlier Toronto Police Services Board meeting without community consultation.

The technology would cost $1.26 million in 2018 and $600,000 in ongoing annual operating costs.

“One of the technologies being submitted, there’s very little information about,” said Councillor Mike Layton ahead of the vote.

“There has been no public discussion about this technology. In fact, when I asked very simple questions about how this technology worked, the chief of police didn’t have those answers.”

A motion from Councillor Josh Matlow to eliminate the funding for CCTV cameras and ShotSpotter lost by a vote of 12 to 33.

But his request that the equivalent amount of funding, $2.6 million, be added to the plan to implement initiatives in the city’s youth equity strategy approved by council in 2014 was approved unanimously.

Council also approved a motion from Councillor Justin Di Ciano that the ShotSpotter technology be monitored by city staff and the community consulted, with a report back to council on its effectiveness in the first quarter of 2019.

“I just feel strongly that if there’s something we can do to quell the gun violence in the city, it needs to be done,” Di Ciano said. “I don’t feel there’s any need to delay the implementation of this technology when the problem is now.”

A group of community activists, scholars and artists published a letter in Now magazine Tuesday condemning the approach of responding to recent violence with policing and not addressing the root causes of violence.

“What the city needs now is to understand that violence is a public health issue, social issue and economic issue,” the letter said. “Our communities need mental health supports, social and economic programs that create healthy communities and ease economic hardship.”

Money for ShotSpotter, the letter said, “would be better spent on programs that are part of a human-centred, violence prevention approach, rather than being added to the more than $1billion the city already spends on policing.”