Well, that didn’t take long. We had barely rung in the new year when the first fatal shooting of 2006 was registered. As Toronto bids farewell to what most dailies were calling “The Year of the Gun,” we add our voice to the crescendo calling for tougher sentences for gun crimes and concrete effort at all political levels to make our streets safer. The tragedy is that, as usual, our leaders had to wait until something as close to home as the Boxing Day murder took place to really get serious about solving the problem.
Why was Mayor Miller so shocked by these particular shootings? As deplorable as they were, did the fact that the deceased was not a gang member suddenly elevate the act into a new violence bracket, at last worthy of general attention? Toronto lost its innocence not during this holiday, but when we started dividing our city into pockets, turning a blind eye to gang violence as long as the problem was “out there” in Malvern or Jane/Finch, communities often stereotyped-and sometime tacitly accepted-as ghettos.
It does no good to smugly declare that at least our murder rate is better than that of a city like Chicago or Detroit, or to blame American gun-runners for our problems. Naturally the issue of gang violence is complex, and it’s also true that by and large we live in a very safe city (according to Statistics Canada report released last July, Toronto had the lowest crime rate in the country in 2004). But the reality is that too many young people are dying senselessly. Encouraging statistics aside, this city is facing a real problem, and the onus is on us to clamp down on this violence while the effect is still manageable.
We owe it to ourselves and our fellow citizens to seriously “recommit” (as Mssrs. Martin, McGuinty, and Miller agreed to do in light of Jane Creba’s murder) to turning the tide on this issue. This pledge needs to come in the form of real change, in the courtrooms and on the streets. Our political and judicial leaders need the courage to bring in-and actually enforce-tough policies that put victims and affected communities above the gunslingers.
It shouldn’t have taken the murder of an innocent young teen in the heart of the tourist district to break our politicians-not to mention ourselves-out of wilful lethargy. Here’s hoping that our approach to combating crime in light of this escalation builds on already existing programs and efforts-of which there are many-and doesn’t resemble the convoluted policies and wanton spending announcements too often seen at the federal level.
We’ve heard politicians recommit to and then conveniently forget about key issues like this before. But we’ve also seen how, after a very public reminder of the problem, political procrastination can turn into immediate action, evidenced by the protests, community marches, and roundtable discussions that have set the city abuzz since Boxing Day.
The dawdling and red tape can often mysteriously disappear in times of crisis, which makes one wonder what’s stopping our leaders from actually leading the rest of the time. We can only hope that, this time, all the consultations produce some sober thought and long-term action-the kind that should have been taken already.
