Think before you dial a COVID-19 snitch line
The other day a friend dropped something off at my back door, but my wife and I didn’t greet her right away. Instead, we watched her descend the stairs of our fire escape and only when her feet touched the bottom landing did we emerge from our apartment onto our balcony to say hello. “Hello!” she shouted from below. “It’s so nice to see you!”
We talked for a few minutes, the first real-world conversation we’d had with another person in weeks. And then we got nervous. How long could this Romeo and Juliet qua-routine last until someone called the police?
We weren’t technically breaking any rules, but what if it didn’t look that way to the neighbours? What if the neighbours didn’t know the rules? What if there was a busybody sitting nearby out of view, thumbs on their smartphone, itching to dial 311? We’ll never know.
That’s the thing about the city’s new bylaw demanding that Torontonians from separate households stand two metres apart in public squares and parks: A lot of people make complaints, but few are fined in comparison. For example, according to data from Tuesday, the city received 345 complaints the previous day, “involving people using outdoor amenities or not practising physical distancing in parks.” However, bylaw and police officers issued only 32 tickets in response. The reasons for this, says a city spokesperson, are many.
For example, multiple complaints are often made about the same location; the city only has so many officers to address those complaints; some of them are unfounded; and, of course, sometimes when officers arrive at the scene of an alleged violation, nobody’s around to be reprimanded.
“This is a very difficult bylaw to enforce because of the fleeting nature, often, of the infraction,” says criminal defence lawyer Andrew Furgiuele. “It’s not like calling in a suspected drunk driver where you have a licence plate and model of a car. If you call in people who are standing beside each other at a park, there’s not much they (officers) can do if they’ve dispersed. The police can’t be everywhere at once.”
Nor should they be. Physical distancing is imperative right now to stop the spread of the virus. And many complaints about its absence are made in good faith. If your neighbour is hosting a family BBQ or very obviously arranging multiple family play dates at the park, you have every justification to make a stink.
But it’s hard to believe that all complaints are created equal — that everyone who puts in a call is doing so with full confidence that the kids playing across the street are friends, not siblings, or that the guys in the park are hanging out as opposed to just passing through. It’s also worth noting that many bylaws historically impact certain groups (youth, minorities, the homeless) more than others.
The city says that “Education and Notices” are its “first line of enforcement and tickets are issued when education and notices do not impact the behaviour.”
But perhaps an additional educational campaign would benefit Toronto, one that promotes the following advice: Think twice before you snitch on your neighbours for supposedly violating physical distancing measures. Wait a minute and ask yourself a few questions first: Do the people across the street really pose a danger or are they stopping to say a quick hello for the first time in weeks at a safe distance before they move on?
Even if it’s bad form for them to stop and say hello at a safe distance before they move on, does such a faux pas really warrant an official complaint and subsequent visit by officers? Could our city’s resources not be better served elsewhere?
If your neighbour clearly poses a danger call it in. But there’s no harm in taking a second look to make sure this is the case. Because if it isn’t the case — if it turns out she’s delivering a pharmacy prescription to an elderly friend or simply walking with her large family — you risk spreading a different contagion in your community: paranoia and anger.
“It’s a tricky situation,” says Steve Joordens, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. “Everybody is trying really hard to do the right thing.”
Joordens is sympathetic to those frustrated with bylaw-flouting neighbours. But he’s also wary of the negative psychological consequences of socalled snitch lines, which he says, can “create anti-social connections, where people start to be angry at each other. That’s the last thing we need in this situation, where we’re all so emotionally raw as it is.”
However, he concedes, it’s “understandable” why people resort to calling such lines in the first place.
Understandable, yes, but not always necessary. If you think you see something untoward take a pause before you phone it in. Take two. I guarantee that you have the time.