Hamilton council calls for program to curb youth gun violence
Review of ‘holistic community responses’ urged to tackle menace
Coun. Brad Clark was at his upper Stoney Creek home in Hamilton putting out the garbage when he thought he heard firecrackers going off.
“We heard the pop, pop, pop.” That was gunfire, his neighbour replied that Aug. 6 evening.
They walked down the street to a Mud Street West shopping plaza and saw emergency responders taking the victims away. “It was bedlam,” Clark recalled Friday. “Residents were truly terrified that night.”
A 17-year-old named Keden Bond later died in hospital after he and two family members, 25 and 35, were shot in the parking lot behind a restaurant in the plaza. For Clark, the tragedy was one too many in an alarming trend that led to his call this week for a “made-in-Hamilton” program to steer young people away from the deadly trap of gun violence. “I don’t think there’s any one person that has the solution to it.”
His motion supported by council colleagues Thursday directs staff in the city’s healthy and safe communities department to review “holistic community responses” to deter young people from gangs and guns.
It draws inspiration from CeaseFire, a community-based approach to gun violence in Chicago that was launched in the late 1990s and focused on prevention and intervention.
In Hamilton, city staff are to ask young people to help formulate a program. Ontario’s solicitor general, local police, youth workers, clergy, criminal justice workers and other experts are also invited to participate.
Clark told councillors he didn’t know the circumstances that led to the violent death near his home. “But this young man’s life was cut short unnecessarily, and it’s happening across our community,” he said.
Police have said three suspects approached the victims in the parking lot and fired several times in what they described as a “targeted shooting.”
The incident was a forerunner to more gun violence in September, when there were six shootings in just 21 days. “The recent trend is not acceptable,” Hamilton Police Deputy Chief Ryan Diodati told The Spectator last month.
That includes the shooting of 19-year-old Sabir Hassen Omer, who died after a man dressed in dark clothing fired a gun at him in a Tim Hortons parking lot at King and Caroline streets on Sept. 14.
Then, on Sept. 24, Yua Blut Kaw, 18, was killed in a drive-by while he walked along Cannon Street East, just blocks from his
high school, marking the year’s 15th homicide.
The community is grieving after the death of the Bernie Custis student, Coun. Nrinder Nann said. She also said there’s “deep concern” among Ward 3 residents over young people swept up in violence, noting her support for a community-driven solution to the problem.
The proposal dovetails with the city’s work on a youth strategy, said Grace Mater, general manager of the healthy and safe communities department.
The isolating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been “staggering on youth,” Mater said, calling Clark’s motion a “great opportunity” for further public feedback.
It also accords with a priority in Hamilton’s broader community safety and well-being plan, a provincially mandated exercise that involves a variety of sectors, including police, school boards and hospitals.
Council must give final approval to the emergency and community services direction this week.