Globe: Inner-city residents buoyed as Toronto crime drops

[scarberiankhatru]

Murders have risen a lot in Brampton.

We use to have 2-3 a year but ever since the violence got really bad in some Toronto neighborhoods, some of those people have moved here.

Not to sound like a snob, but they have brought the crime and violence with them and many residents have reacted in a racist way.

Uh, yeah, murders might rise if the population explodes.

 

[PukeGreen]

Uh, yeah, murders might rise if the population explodes.

Exactly. When people compare crime frequencies in downtown Toronto to those in individual areas in the surrounding burbs, the most simple fact that is seems to be so often overlooked is the population density.

For example, if there were 3 murders one year in the town of Newmarket (pop 75,000) most residents would probably feel pretty safe. They might look south to the city of Toronto proper (pop 2,500,000) with 75 murders and think "wow, they have a serious crime problem there." In fact, in this hypothetical case Newmarket would be statistically more dangerous: 0.0004% of their population would have been murdered versus only 0.0003% of Toronto's.

Sure, the numbers above are approximated (aka pulled out of my ass) but I think my point stands; crime rates in downtown Toronto are higher than the burbs, but not ridiculously so, and the gap is closing. Also, many of the gangs treat downtown as a "neutral" zone where they commit their violent hits before returning home to, yes, the burbs (for that matter, so do many of the "clubbers" who descend on the entertainment district from the 905 every weekend to wreak havoc).

Gentrification is a mixed bag, but I hope it helps finally put to rest many of the outdated anti-city biases in the media, who still seem to enjoy portraying the stereotype of the crime ridden city surrounded by lush green suburban wonderlands. The world is more complex.

 

[taal]

Yes and no,

Comparing the entire city to any other town / city Toronto is easily one of the safest if not the safest.

But comparing a particular location in Toronto ... say Jane and Finch to another town /city isn't quite the same. In smaller places it's harder to establish location correlations with crime.

the point is for the city as a whole yes your statistically safer but if you live in a particular area you might not be! The reverse of that is that others area's in Toronto (NYCC ... Yonge and Eglinton ... others) are way safer then anywhere else in Canada.

 

[devil_dice]

Typically Toronto's murder rate (and violent crime rate) has been almost on par with Canada as a whole for the last decade or so. Last time I checked, we had a murder rate of 1.9 per 100,000 people. Comparatively, NYC, one of the safest American cities, has a rate of about 5.9 per 100,000, and Chicago is about 5x higher than NYC.

It's all about perspective. I have friends from the burbs (and the city too, to be fair) that cite the Jane Creba Boxing Day tragedy in 2005 as a testament to how dangerous the city, and particularly downtown, is. In my opinion, the fact that this case from nearly four years ago is known by just about everybody in the GTA shows that random killings are so rare, and that Toronto is GENERALLY a very safe city.

 

[adma]

Well, it helped that it was the random killing of a white middle class girl from Riverdale. If it was a guy named "Jamal" rather than a girl named "Jane", things might be different.

Yeah, just like my comment on Birch Cliff's "whiteness", I'm sending a message there.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

^ If memory serves me correctly, the Boxing Day Shooting infuriated people and made international headlines before we knew that the 1 death out of 7 shot was white middle class Jane Creba from Riverdale...a 'shoppers on a crowded street getting mowed down by bullets' scene is one of the worst things that can happen to the perception of downtown/urban safety.

 

[Therion]

When my parents worry about my safety, I tell them to worry about my brother, who is doing his Ph.D. in Edmonton. He's got more than double the chance of being murdered, and triple the chance of having his car stolen. Ontario as a whole has the lowest crime rates of any province, less than half of all the Western provinces, in fact.

Statscan Site

 

[Admiral Beez]

Well, it helped that it was the random killing of a white middle class girl from Riverdale. If it was a guy named "Jamal" rather than a girl named "Jane", things might be different.

There's definitely a degree of truth there. But public perception comes down to a numbers game, where you see that "Jamal" is both shooter and victim in most cases and thus resulting in a general indifference from the public since who cares if the gangstas shoot the gangstas, while "Jane" represents what the public fears, in that we could all be victims of the random shooter, organized crime and the gangstas.

 

[Dichotomy]

Cultural attitudes are everything. Jane was accidentally shot downtown, in front of dozens of mixed witnesses. Too often in some of the higher crime neighborhoods of Toronto, when a - ahem, non-white is shot by another non-white, the witnesses live there and are afraid to come forward.
Plus, for anyone who has had firsthand dealings with the law, both from the inside and the outside, it is time consuming, boring and potentially costly.
How many people on this board would jump at the chance of coming forward in a shooting incident? Really think about what that could mean for you and your family: time off work, trips to Court and to police interviews, potentially hostile cross examination by lawyers, long hours of waiting, perhaps a trip out of the city to appear in court.

It sounds great to want to do your civic duty, but there are ramifications attached.

I feel far safer downtown than I do in parts of Scarborough or north Etobicoke at night. I wouldn't say crime 'feels' to be any worse or less than 30 years ago, but I don't think it is getting 'better.'