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Leave 'Scarborough' out of crime reports

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wyliepoon

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Leave 'Scarborough' out of crime reports, media urged

JENNIFER LEWINGTON

When bad things happen east of Victoria Park Avenue, the news media should agree not to mention the "S" word -- as in Scarborough.

That's the view of two Toronto city councillors, who want council to ask the news media to name only the street or nearby intersection when crime occurs in Scarborough.

"The feeling is that this image we have is either the product of, or reinforced by, the way the media report crime," said Councillor Norm Kelly (Ward 40, Scarborough-Agincourt).

"If there is a shooting at Jane and Finch, it is at Jane and Finch," he said. "If there is shooting at Neilson and Finch, it is in Scarborough."

On Monday, Mr. Kelly and fellow Scarborough councillor Michael Thompson (Ward 37, Scarborough Centre) will make their pitch for media self-censorship to council's executive committee -- the mayor's so-called cabinet, which includes Mr. Kelly.
 
""If there is shooting at Neilson and Finch, it is in Scarborough.""

No, that gets called Malvern, invariably. Everything else, though, is Scarborough.
 
I'm more annoyed by the media referring to ANYTHING east of Yonge as "east end" and vice-versa. As in "There were two shootings in the city's west end this evening. The first took place at King and Dufferin around 7pm while the second took place at Kipling and the 401." I've even seen Peel and Durham regions referred to as "city's west/east end".

In these cases I'm always encouraged when they actually bother to use more specific terms like Scarborough, Etobicoke, Malvern, or Rexdale.
 
Michael Thompson supports profiling Blacks, but is against a perception of profiling Scarborough?
 
why not use GPS coordinates instead?

from a stigma point of view, it's better to say scarborough than to be too specific and name a smaller locale or an intersection which can be more devastating to a community.
if someone pees in the lake, you won't be too put off and avoid swimming but if someone pees in your glass, chances are that you won't drink.

here's an idea, focus on taking the crime out of scarborough rather than taking the scarborough out of the crime.
 
"here's an idea, focus on taking the crime out of scarborough rather than taking the scarborough out of the crime."

Well put.
 
Improving Scarborough's image is the first step towards reducing crime.
 
Dictating what journalists are allowed to say in reports is probably not a step in the right direction. One can only hope and appeal to the media that they report all murders and locations throughout the city in an even way.
 
Improving Scarborough's image is the first step towards reducing crime.
Click to expand...

That seems backwards to me. I don't think that people commit crime because it is Scarborough. The image of Scarborough will fix itself if crimes stop happening there. The root cause of crime in Scarborough would only in a very small degree be influenced by the perception of Scarborough.
 
I should have said "a" first step; an easy first step.
 
This thing about leaving Scarborough out of reports raises an interesting observation. It seems like outside the old City of Toronto, places in the "megacity" are usually identified by what former city they are located in. Aside from a small list of community names like Malvern, Agincourt, Willowdale, Rexdale, Don Mills, etc., the rest of the city is only known as Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke, York or East York.

Might this be a good time to revive names of neighbourhoods to better pinpoint suburban places in Toronto? Scarborough has a long list of names of neighbourhoods- Agincourt, Milliken, Malvern, Rouge Hill, Woburn, Wexford, Cedarbrae, Scarborough Centre, etc. Although I still take some pride in being Scarberian, it would be more helpful if I told someone the immediate neighbourhood where I live in than to say I live in "Scarborough". Neighbourhood names also make great name ideas for subway stations, especially when we're talking about subway extensions where two or more stations will be located on the same street.
 
By "Scarborough Centre", do you mean the Civic/Town Centre area, or the old hamlet of Scarboro (Kingston + St. Clair, I believe)?
 
All Scarberians (even ex-pats like myself) will identify Scarborough Centre as the civic centre/mall. I think the hamlet you're thinking of is further East, and most people refer to it as Old Kingston. Kingston/St. Clair would be identified as Cliffcrest.
 
I'm totally with Wylie. I'd like to see neighbourhood names have a more robust presence and better definition. There are many problems with the terminology used now.

By the way, the neighbourhood you are talking about is called, by the city, Scarborough Village. However, if you look at the City's neighbourhood map, you will see that Scarborough Centre is not a neighbourhood at all. It exists not, just as North York Centre doesn't exist at all.

One of the problems with neighbourhoods is that the former cities all had their own method of division. East York had a few defined neighbourhoods, but an East York rump in the middle with no appearent name. North York went in for a micro approach with itty bitty tiny neighbourhoods that had no bearing on what people actually called something (they actually had two levels of neighbourhood). Scarborough was in fact exemplary in this regard - its neighbourhoods are generally quite well defined.
 
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