Boxing Day Shooting

[blixa442]

Several years ago I was in Philadelphia and had the accidental misfortune of visiting Camden, which by the way is conveniently located on the other side of the river (made a really wrong turn). In any event it was a total war zone... Having previously visited Detroit ghettos I thought I had seen it all. Camden is in a different league though... We just ran a row of red lights and got the hell out - it was that frightening. If you're ever wandering in the Philly area make sure to make a note of this place.

 

[JoeyCuppa]

A building owner nearby complained that he put up a light in the back alley and drug dealers kept smashing the bulb so that they could conduct their business,

Any chance he could put it higher up? It's good to have people *trying* to make a difference... how can we help them?

 

[spmarshall]

Several years ago I was in Philadelphia and had the accidental misfortune of visiting Camden, which by the way is conveniently located on the other side of the river (made a really wrong turn).

Wow. I almost feel that I've got to see this place - I've seen and drove, and/or walked around in Detroit, Flint, Vancouver East Side and haven't been that creeped (the worst I felt was being the only white person on a Detroit bus, but that wasn't that bad, especially after I made hints that I was Canadian, which ended the looks and mutterings). I wonder what the PATCO trains are like.

Though I haven't been in the worst of Chicago (which, for all the envy and grining of teeth here about what Chicago does right, has serious issues), and that I think might creep me out a bit. I have been in amongst the worst areas of Detroit, but that was by car (with Ontario plates) and in daylight.

 

[Archivistower]

I passed over Camden on the PATCO train a few years ago, of course I didn't get out and walk around. Here's a little glimpse of some of what I saw.

 

[miketoronto]

Click on the following link and then push play, to hear the song about making Camden a better place. Its an interesting song.

www.ci.camden.nj.us/

 

[adma]

Micallef's latest

These bad people

Since I have the luxury of living downtown and not in a violence-prone neighbourhood, and since I don’t know anybody personally touched by violence, I look at images and reactions like the one above (found at John Fewings’s political cartoon website) and worry. I “get†cartoons like this, but I also feel a fair amount of reservation, because though a terrible thing happened there, that isn’t the Yonge and Dundas I walk through every-other-day, and we should calm down and figure out why all this stuff is happening, and figure out real ways to stop it, and not scare ourselves with hyperbole like that.

But then something will happen that blows all the rational thought out. On New Years Eve we were travelling a little after 11PM from Sherborne Station, heading for Dufferin and ultimately a midnight celebration in Parkdale. The subway was crowded and people were happy and it felt good to be back in the city after nearly a month spent in fine and exotic places that are not as interesting as Toronto. Crowds of hornblowers got off at Bathust, making noise and cheering. At Christie, the train stopped and a weird constant buzzing sound started. I had never heard the sound that the emergency strip makes when pushed. I had also never been in a car where something bad was happening, but at the next door a very angry young man was being held against the wall but two other guys. He was struggling to get free, and was staring at something/nothing in the middle distance with that awful drunk-screwed up angry face people in bar fights make. The woman next to me was repeating “you’ve got to be kidding†and then the conductor came on the PA and said “This train is not moving until the police arrive†and in a split second it was like the air changed and everybody started pouring off the train and up the stairs and outside. It was strange to feel panic in Toronto (albeit mild, but any kind of panic in this city is exceptional), and stranger still to understand that the panic is causing me to do something smart: leave. Maybe if the boxing day shooting hadn’t happened, I’d not have left. Maybe I would have — it’s hard to tell.

But when you see first hand one of the people scaring this city to its core, it’s hard not to think irrationally, and for the rest of the night a line from an old Ministry song that howls “**** all these assholes†would not leave my head as much as I tried. Indeed, in the most rational way, **** all these armed assholes, but it’s going to take extra effort not to freak out in the next little bit while we figure out how to stop this.

I’m certain that if anybody can figure out how to stop this sort of thing, it will be Toronto, because of all the reasons we love this city-unlike-any-other. But even as I write that, I’m reminded of what happened in Detroit in the mid-1960s, though the specific circumstances were different. As the rest of America seemed to burn in race-riots, Detroit was held up as a city where it could never happen, a successful model of integration and co-operation. Yet in 1967 the worst civil insurection in US history (until the ‘92 LA Riots) hit that city. When it was all over, mayor Jerome Cavanagh said “Today we stand amidst the ashes of our hopes. We hoped against hope that what we had been doing was enough to prevent a riot. It was not enough.†Recent events may have taken away the smugness we may sometimes feel in this city, which might be good, because it reminds us all the great things in Toronto don’t happen by accident, and we need to struggle to preserve what’s good, and make sure everybody can get a piece of it.

 

[blixa442]

Blowing the whistle on gun murder

In Toronto, we had a race to see which came first: the New Year's baby, or the New Year's gun murder. The baby won, but not by much. Before the day dawned on 2006, 21-year-old Dillan Yhanike Anderson was shot dead in an alley in his silver Cadillac Seville.

His passing did not inspire the same outpouring of grief and outrage as the death of Jane Creba, the 15-year-old who was cut down in the Boxing Day shootout. I suspect no one will be rushing to hold candlelight vigils for him. Is this racist? The CBC seems to think so. "Poor black victims are being forgotten," one expert opined. "There just seems to be a double standard when it comes to white middle-class people."

Well, hold it just a minute. There was quite a fuss when a (black) 4-year-old named Shaquan Cadougan took four bullets in his little body last summer. Fortunately, he didn't die, but he, too, was an innocent bystander. Most of Toronto's other gun victims are not. Mr. Anderson, for example, was on probation for shooting another man in the head in 2003. Another difference might be the fact that Ms. Creba got shot in broad daylight, in the heart of mainstream Canada, on a day when millions of people go out to shop and have fun. In other words, if she's not safe, who is?

Far from focusing our attention on the real issues, the murder of Ms. Creba seems to have inspired new levels of weaseling and fatuity. "These are Harris's children, because they were 5 or 6 years old [when Mike Harris became premier of Ontario in 1995], and these were the kids that got neglected," one community activist told the Toronto Star, referring to thugs who shoot innocent bystanders in broad daylight. "A decade of neglect in Toronto is coming back to haunt us," declared Olivia Chow, who's running for office. "How many more innocents will it take?"

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Racism and joblessness are always popular culprits, too. CBC Radio quoted someone saying that, when the only jobs young people can get are part-time ones without benefits, well, what can you expect? American gun culture also came in for the usual licking. CBC-TV did some neat graphics on gun crime in Houston, and the Star even found an expert who blamed Hollywood. "If you go to a movie today in New York, you see preview after preview with scenes of unbelievable gun violence," he said.

Actually there's been a crime crash in New York City. Gun murders there are at a 40-year low, and swaths of the city did not record a single gun fatality last year. Meantime, the gun-murder rate in Jamaica is among the highest in the world. But nobody mentioned that. In fact, the word "Jamaica" can't be found in any of these penetrating analyses, even though police will tell you off the record that 80 per cent or more of the city's gun crime is Jamaican-related.

The violent culture of Jamaica sheds far more light on Toronto's gun-and-gang problem than Mr. Harris's cruel decision to shut down the Anti-Racism Secretariat. So does the culture of gangsta rap. All the black kids know this; they understand the pervasive influence of gangsta culture far better than our media experts and community leaders do. So does Bob Herbert, the black, liberal New York Times columnist. In his view, poor, urban North American blacks are being devastated by a self-inflicted set of woes that are as harmful as the Jim Crow laws once were. He is calling for a new civil-rights revolution -- from within.

"It is time to blow the whistle on the nitwits who have so successfully promoted a values system that embraces murder, drug-dealing, gang membership, misogyny, child abandonment and a sense of self so diseased that it teaches children to view the men in their orbit as niggaz and the women as hoes," Mr. Herbert wrote recently. "I understand that jobs are hard to come by for many people, and that many schools are substandard, and that racial discrimination is still widespread. But those are not good reasons for committing cultural suicide."

Are we failing our most disadvantaged kids? Damn right. We're failing them with our evasions and our cowardice. We are failing them with our reluctance to tell the truth. How many more innocents will it take? I shudder to think.

mwente@globeandmail.ca

 

[borgos]

I was listening to CBC radio on the evening after the boxing day shooting. The guest was an African-Canadian poet from Halifax. She blamed the shootings on "racist police". The always polite host never challenged her.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Assuming Wente's premise is correct - that it is a purely cultural issue, what does that mean? That in light of the "culture" one is born into, the society as a whole should do nothing with these adolescents, and leave the responsiblity of their upbringing to the mercies of the reality of the community they're born into? I thought that's exactly what happened - and now the society as a whole is reaping the fruit.

AoD

 

[Christopher DeWolf]

this might be an interesting take on the issue. two large cities with diverging crime trends. montreal used to have more violence than toronto, now it has considerably less.

so what is to be made of this? one person quoted argues that the deep cuts to ontario social programs and education made in the 1990s -- at the same time that quebec was bolstering those same things -- has a lot to do with the current spate of gang violence. the police, naturally, credit montreal's drop in homicides with "more police."

Montreal gains 'safe' rep as killings drop

AARON DERFEL
The Gazette

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

The tale of two cities couldn't be starker.

Montreal reported its lowest number of homicides on record last year.

Toronto, by comparison, witnessed an explosion in gun violence and gang-related killings.

In the words of Montreal police chief Yvan Delorme, Montreal is gaining a reputation as a "safe international city" - with all crime indicators on the decline.

In the words of Toronto homicide Detective Savas Kyriacou: "Toronto has finally lost its innocence."

He made that remark after a 15-year-old girl, Jane Creba, was shot dead in the crossfire of a Boxing Day gun battle on Yonge St. between rival street gangs.

Ronald Melchers, a criminologist at the University of Ottawa, suggests the sharp contrast in violence between the two cities stems from the radically different social policies of Quebec and Ontario in the 1990s.

"During the 1990s - which is the time when these kids who are now waving guns around in the streets of Toronto were in childcare and early elementary school - there were tremendous cutbacks by the Ontario government," Melchers said in an interview yesterday.

"Schools were cut to the bone by the Mike Harris government. Childcare was virtually devastated. All these things had to have some impact, and they had the impact, of course, in the neighbourhoods where you found the poorest populations. And these are now the neighbourhoods where these kids are coming from.

"During that time," Melchers added, "Quebec had gone exactly in the opposite direction, with a very aggressive construction of an early child-care system and support of schools' capacities to specifically integrate immigrant children."

Indeed, Quebec's child-care program has been cited by Ken Dryden, federal minister of social development, as a model for a national childcare policy.

The number of homicides in Montreal dropped last year to 35 from 42, or 16 per cent. In Toronto, the number of murders jumped to 78 from 62 - an increase of almost 26 per cent.

Gun-related shootings were four times more prevalent in Toronto than Montreal.

Prime Minister Paul Martin has blamed weapons smuggled illegally from the United States for much of the gun violence. Melchers attributes Toronto's nearness to the U.S. border and a spillover effect of that country's war on drugs for many of the shootings.

"American policy on drugs has had two kinds of impacts," he explained. "First of all, a lot of the activity moved from the U.S. side (Buffalo) to the Canadian side, and that resulted in a boom in drug offending, and the kind of criminality that is related to that, beginning in the 1990s.

"The other effect is the exportation of gangs, guns and drug culture from the United States, and that has grown up tremendously since the U.S. war on drugs," he said.

Montreal has also experienced its share of gun violence, mainly between outlaw biker gangs. But the war between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine has subsided since its peak in the mid-to-late 1990s, with the arrests of Hells leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher and other bikers.

Since then, community policing - with its emphasis on more street patrols - has expanded in Montreal, and the city's economy has improved - factors that might help explain the declining homicide rate.

"It's probably due to a greater police presence," said Montreal police Constable Anie Lemieux.

Montreal's homicide rate is in line with the national trend. The Canadian rate stood at 1.95 per 100,000 residents in 2004, the last year for which complete figures are available. Montreal's homicide rate last year was 1.94. Toronto's was 3.12.

Despite all the attention on Toronto, Winnipeg bears the notorious distinction of being the most murderous city. Its homicide rate was 4.89 in 2004.

(Although Regina's rate was 4.98, it is not considered a large city, and so it's not fair to use it for comparison purposes, Melchers said.)

For all the concern about Toronto, that city's homicide rate had also been steadily declining until last year. In 1991, Toronto reported a record 88 homicides. Montreal's record stands at 104, in 1975.

Although the news media tend to dwell on murder and mayhem, Melchers noted violent crime has been gradually decreasing across Canada in the past couple of decades. The reason might be the aging of the population.

Lest anyone jump to the conclusion Toronto is fast becoming like a typical U.S. metropolis, U.S. statistics show Canada's largest city is still much safer.

Boston, with a population of 600,000, reported 75 homicides last year, of which 49 were gun-related. In Toronto, with a population of 2.5 million, 52 of the 78 homicides were gun-related.

There were 445 homicides in Chicago, 195 in Washington, D.C., and 268 in Baltimore.

Other Montreal homicide statistics:

- Montreal police solved 21 homicides last year, and four from previous years.

- Conjugal violence was blamed in 12 homicides. A settling of accounts was the reason for another dozen.

- There were two incidents of Russian roulette.

- Seven homicides resulted during fights between individuals.

- Sharp objects were used in 37 per cent of the homicides. Guns accounted for 34 per cent and physical force for 29 per cent.

 

[SD2]

this might be an interesting take on the issue. two large cities with diverging crime trends. montreal used to have more violence than toronto, now it has considerably less.

I can't really agree with this though. For all the hype, the crime rate in Toronto is considerably lower than Montreal - and up until 2005, the homicide rate was virtually identical (and it still might not be off by much).

so what is to be made of this? one person quoted argues that the deep cuts to ontario social programs and education made in the 1990s -- at the same time that quebec was bolstering those same things -- has a lot to do with the current spate of gang violence. the police, naturally, credit montreal's drop in homicides with "more police."

Interesting points I think others have brought up...I do agree the cuts have had some undesirable long term effects (some that many were predicting when they were made).

 

[bizorky]

When I was living in Montreal there was a year where there were over 100 homicides. When adjusted for per capita incidence, the difference between the two cities is not so stark. Montreal had 35 murders with a poulation of 1.8 million, Toronto had 78 murders with a population of about 2.6 million.

Either way, both cities had a very low murder rate, over all. Nevertheless, trying to understand why young men are more prone to kill is a worthwhile activity; throwing out hundreds of excuses for it only clouds the issue. Mike Harris was an ass, but to focus blame on cutbacks to social spending as THE cause for these murders, or Quebec-style day care as the solution for them is specious.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

After more than a decade of virtually unchanging numbers of homicides, any bump up is going to seem like the end of the world. but the added gun deaths this year can all be attributed to a small group of people targeting another small group of people...nothing to worry about since the odds of another person like Jane Creba getting murdered are still literally about one in a million.

Here's Toronto's gun deaths, total homicides, and assorted rates for 1991 to 2002:
www.guncontrol.ca/Content...3FINAL.PDF

 

[adma]

- There were two incidents of Russian roulette.

I don't know why I chuckled at that one...

 

[tudararms]

Interesting posts adma and blixa.

AoD: The "cultural" issue is significant. The reason society as a whole is now paying the price for not reacting to cultural issues is because society is never allowed to! If one makes any critical comment about a community, no matter how responsible or sensitive, and no matter how verifiable or true, one is immediately branded and dismissed as a racist. We have created a culture of denial and defensiveness, one in which we we are encouraged to marginalize ourselves and assert our minority rites at all and any cost without any acknowledgment of social responsibility whatsoever. Case in point: black community leaders are already denying and deflecting by asserting that the city is racist in only reacting to the murder of a white girl. Where is the acknowledgement of the problem within the community here? Where is the ownership of responsibility here? How does this denial help the community and the very individuals these community leaders purport to represent?? The fact is, the politically correct climate of this city is crippling, and 'truth' is as much an innocent victim as the poor girl shot dead on our city's mainstreet on boxing day. This is why I do worry for the future of this city. If we are not able to acknowledge reality and accept the truth how can we ever hope to change the tide of violence and economic downfall that will inevitably ensue?