Guns, Gangs and Toronto

[Blue Max]

Do you mean Chuick Cadman? I believe his son was killed by a gang or in a mugging and Chuck became a law and order advocate.

Yes Old Sweat, the former independent member of parliament "Chuck Cadman", represented Surrey, central I believe? He was impressively fighting for law and order changes, because his son was killed in front of a McDonald's after being swarmed by teenagers.

 

[Edward Campbell]

>Infanteer, some useful protocol from Brad Swallows?  How would he handle Toronto?

I don't have a complete solution, but I would not proceed from the assumption that a few bad neighbourhoods and/or zones in a few major Canadian cities justifies limiting freedoms of all residents of those cities, let alone all of a province or all of the nation.  Whenever I hear proposals that the solution to crime is to more closely monitor honest people and intrude into our lives, I am inclined to disarm the police and arm the citizens.

One of the problems facing Canada is the lack of will to address a problem only where it exists and politely tell the complainers to fcuk off when they bitch that they are being discriminated against.

Agreed!

We, Canada at large, do not have a crime problem or a gun problem nor even a gun/crime problem.  Violence, including violence with guns, is blessedly rare throughout most of Canada, just as it is throughout most of the USA and, indeed, most of Australia, Belgium, Chile and so on.

Some, thankfully only a few, identifiable, self-segregated communities within Canada, especially within our cities, DO have serious, deadly social problems with manifest themselves in bloody murder, often with guns.

I believe that the segregation – especially the self-segregation – is the key issue.  Most people, it seems to me, based upon my own rather extensive observations during 60+ years of service and travel on several different continents, are fairly peaceful.  The more prosperous the more peaceful: the rich and fat have no stomach for risk or violence – although some would argue that the rich and fat employ the poor and hungry to do violence to their equally poor and hungry neighbours to preserve the status quo.  I also observe that prosperous nations are less inclined to make war on their neighbours – especially on their equally prosperous neighbours.  Peace and prosperity seem to go hand in hand.

Here in Canada I would tend to divide the segregated communities into two groups:

1. The poor and ill-educated; and

2. The socially un-integrated.

I believe that Toronto black community and many (most) aboriginal communities – including, especially the urban ones – fall into the first category.  I think poverty and poor education are tightly intertwined – even in the most liberal of rich societies.  I believe that most affirmative action programmes in most rich, liberal societies have the perverse effect of entrenching self segregation, inadequate educational expectations and achievements and, as a direct consequence, poverty.  I believe that when self segregated societies are poor and poorly educated and have access to the mass media which displays the imagined trappings of wealth then crime must follow; violence must follow crime; guns are quick, easy, effective tools for dealing out violence in a criminal society.

Despite the best efforts of earlier generations some Asian (East and South Asian) communities have declined to integrate into the Canadian mainstream.  They are, often, prosperous, successful communities but they eschew integration which means that the societal norms are seen, by young people, especially, to be foreign.  These communities, too, despite good educations, can turn violent because they are unconstrained by the broader social norms.

Let’s fix the communities which have the crime/violence problems – the crime/violence will, then, fall to broad, national levels.

 

[Infanteer]

Anybody have access to the Globe and Mail - I read an excellent piece by Jeffrey Simpson today that is online here but I don't have internet access to it.  It fits perfectly with the discussion on this thread.

 

[TCBF]

Yesterday, Margarette Wente, writing in the Globe and Mail, actually had the temerity to use the 'J' word (Jamaican).  In a newspaper.  In Toronto.  How that got past the editors, we can only guess.

Tom

 

[Infanteer]

Someone should sign up for the 14-day trial and post it here....

 

[NavComm]

Did not the MP from the lower mainland who recently died of cancer continually push for a strenghtening of the Criminal code? (Sorry I cannot remember his name at this moment)

Chuck Cadman, he founded a victims group after his son died which lead to a career in politics. He was IIRC more interested in strengthening the young offenders act.

I think White is even tougher in his views on crime.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the fair comment provisions of the Copyright Act, is Peggy Wente's Globe and Mail column from 3 Jan 06:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20060103/COWENTE03/Columnists/Columnist?author=Margaret+Wente

Blowing the whistle on gun murder
By MARGARET WENTE

Tuesday, January 3, 2006
Posted at 8:22 PM EST

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?"

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

© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.​

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the fair comment provisions of the Copyright Act, is Jeffery Simpson's Globe and Mail column from 4 Jan 06:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20060104/COSIMP04/Columnists/Columnist?author=Jeffrey+Simpson

Read my lips: There is no crime epidemic in Canada
By JEFFREY SIMPSON

Wednesday, January 4, 2006
Posted at 8:28 PM EST

Toronto being Toronto, and the national media being mostly located in Toronto, that city's spate of gun violence has become big news.

Front-page coverage. Crime columnists hyperventilating. Politicians rushing to propose quick solutions. America-bashing. The rest of Canada has seen and heard it all. Toronto's problems equal Canada's.

Except that they don't. Step back from the frenzy and look at some numbers.

There were three shooting incidents in Ottawa, for example, before and after Christmas, with two fatalities and several near misses, including a shotgun blast to the rear of a car and the riddling of another with bullets. Amount of coverage in the national media? Zero.

There were two shooting incidents during the same period in Toronto, with two fatalities. Amount of coverage? You saw it.

Toronto is now deemed a violent city. It isn't, no matter what the media report. Canada is said to be becoming a violent country. It isn't, no matter what the media report.

Toronto has a localized violent crime problem in several pockets of the city. It is concentrated, largely but not exclusively, among Jamaican-Canadian youth. To extrapolate widespread violence in the city or the province from this tiny subset of the population grossly distorts reality.

You want violent crime? Consider this: The homicide rate in Western Canada is much higher than that of Ontario. In Manitoba, the rate is 4.3 for every 100,000 people; it's 3.9 in Saskatchewan and 2.7 in Alberta and British Columbia. In Ontario, the rate is 1.5, the same as in Quebec, a province with a much smaller population.

Toronto's deaths -- at least the ones the media highlighted -- were from shootings. It was therefore taken for granted that Canada had a handgun problem, and politicians rushed to propose remedies.

In Ottawa, by contrast, only two of the 11 homicides in 2005 were gun-related. The others were from beatings and stabbings.

While the media fixate on death by shooting, here's what Statistics Canada reported about homicides in 2004, the last year for which final numbers are available: More murders resulted from stabbings (205) than handguns (172). From 2000 to 2004, more murders were by knives (849) than guns (840).

Throw in murders by strangulation, beating, burning, and what Statscan calls "other methods," and 2.5 times more people were murdered by means other than a gun in 2004.

From 2000 to 2004, homicides in Canada rose by 7 per cent, but the population increased by slightly more than 5 per cent. This is an epidemic of crime? The press coverage suggests yes; the facts say no.

The homicide rate inched up during those years, but the incidence of every other category of serious crime declined, including attempted murder, sexual assault, robbery, break and enter, and theft. And yet, reading and listening to the national media and watching the campaigning politicians with their palliatives, the unsuspecting might believe that Canada is besieged by violent crime.

Predictably, those searching for an explanation to Toronto's murders pointed to the United States, where the homicide rate is eight times that of Canada. Accusers rightly say there are guns aplenty across the border.

But haven't guns always been available in the U.S.? Is there anything new about their availability?

The U.S. supply of guns has been a constant for decades. What's changed is the demand. And where's the demand? Right here in Canada. It's too bad for Americans and for us that guns are so prevalent in the United States. That more of them are showing up in Canada reflects a change in Canadian demand, not U.S. supply.

Crime sells newspapers and drives TV ratings ("if it bleeds, it leads"), which is the most plausible explanation for the media's focus, despite the statistical evidence that serious crime is declining.

An immense amount of pernicious nonsense usually surrounds violent crime reporting and its breathless aftermath. Canada, like all Western societies, has a generalized crime challenge, what with thugs and nasty people around.

Canada's particular problems, however, are inner-city drug- and gang-related: aboriginal gangs in some places, Indo-Canadian ones in B.C.'s Lower Mainland, Jamaican-Canadian ones (and a few others) in Toronto, biker gangs in Quebec and parts of Ontario.

Serious as these problems are, they do not constitute a crime epidemic, media coverage notwithstanding.

jsimpson@globeandmail.com

© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.​

 

[Armymedic]

I never want to be a police officer, no matter what you do, you'll be screwed.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060104/racial_profiling_060104/20060104?hub=Canada

Black lawyer to file lawsuit against police today
Updated Wed. Jan. 4 2006 9:17 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

A Toronto lawyer who says his car was surrounded by police who accused him of having drugs and guns will file a lawsuit Wednesday for the surprise shakedown.

Jason Bogle, one of Toronto's youngest black lawyers at 26, says he was sitting in the parked Lexus with his girlfriend outside her house on his birthday, Dec. 29, when five or six police cars surrounded them.

Bogle said he decided to file the lawsuit after the officers allegedly connected the ambush with the Boxing Day shootings on Yonge Street.

Bogle told CTV's Canada AM he is one of many of Toronto's young black males who have received this type of treatment -- what he calls "driving while black."

"I think a lot of people seem to think that racial profiling… doesn't really happen, but here's a clear case where I was in a vehicle that was parked and I was minding my business and for some reason these officers decided to take it upon themselves… to investigate myself and my occupant," Bogle said Wednesday.

Bogle said the cars were all unmarked except one and appeared suddenly, flashing their high beams before surrounding the Lexus. He said the officers got out and lined both sides of the vehicle, while one opened Bogle's door, grabbed his shoulder and demanded identification.

"Because they had flashed in such an erratic manner, I was unable to discern whether they were officers," he said. "I was very upset because I didn't understand what was going on."

"Then accusations came out about me being in possession of guns or drugs and I remember an officer making the same reference to my girlfriend's mother. She had just come outside to see her daughter and myself surrounded by all these officers," he said, saying the confrontation drew the attention of many neighbours as well.

After presenting his Ontario bar card, Bogle said he continued to face difficulty convincing police he was a lawyer, not a drug dealer. It ended, he said, with police admitting they had the wrong person, but he did not receive an apology nor an explanation.

"These were people that are trained to serve and protect the community," said Bogle, adding the police tried to convince him to "let bygones be bygones" after the incident.

"It's kind of funny because when I described my story to other persons, there was a number of other people that experienced the same thing," he said.

Bogle said he wants to use his position as a lawyer to change what he believes is a systemic problem of racial profiling.

Toronto Police Spokesman Mark Pugash insists the officers were professional throughout the process. He said the officers also claim they went to extraordinary lengths to explain to Bogle why he was stopped.

Bogle will be filing the lawsuit against the Toronto Police Service in court Wednesday. The Canadian Press has reported Bogle plans to sue the force for $1.5 million for wrongful detention and inflicting emotional distress.

 

[Blackhorse7]

Bogle can kiss my (fill in whatever you like). :mg:

 

[The_Falcon]

Yeah, I am sure Mr. Bogle was the epitome of a well composed polite individual when he was stopped too. :  What a tool. 

In other news, Harper is finally in Toronto and is going to be announcing some policy WRT to the current situation.

 

[SHELLDRAKE!!]

He said the officers got out and lined both sides of the vehicle, while one opened Bogle's door, grabbed his shoulder and demanded identification.

Oh my goodness, imagine any police officer taking personal precautions when approaching a vehicle with unknown occupants...

"Because they had flashed in such an erratic manner, I was unable to discern whether they were officers," he said. "I was very upset because I didn't understand what was going on."

So you feel that several unmarked cars would flash their lights at you to steal your car?

"Then accusations came out about me being in possession of guns or drugs and I remember an officer making the same reference to my girlfriend's mother. She had just come outside to see her daughter and myself surrounded by all these officers,"

Are you saying the officers asked you if you had any weapons or drugs? Boy thats not right is it?

After presenting his Ontario bar card, Bogle said he continued to face difficulty convincing police he was a lawyer, not a drug dealer.

After all, a bar card cant be forged and everyone knows lawyers dont use drugs......its against the law

"These were people that are trained to serve and protect the community,"

Its probably better if they didn't stop vehicles and ask questions, that would protect and serve the community better. Im sorry but as a citizen of Canada, I would take no offence to an inquiry or even a search if it meant crime rates went down. Maybee someone should sue him for backlogging the courts system with stupid accusations.

 

[The_Falcon]

I just watched Harper live, and I liked it.  Some of the highlights were hiring an additional 1000 RCMP officers, providing federal funding for provinces/cities to hire 2500 Police Officers, higher mandatory minimums for 26 weapons offences, ending statutory release, and ending conditional sentences for violent/repeat/sexual offenders,and hiring more Customs Officers and arming them with firearms .  He also took some major swipes at Martin, mentioning things about Canadian values and what not.  Go Harper!

 

[kincanucks]

Mr. Bogle  :tsktsk: :boring: :-[

Mr. Harper  :cheers: :king:

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

A lawyer deal drugs??....naw, THAT could never happen in our jails..... :

Whats funny is that he thinks he should be treated different because of his occupation....wouldn't that be some form of discrimination towards us non-lawyer types?? ;D  I should sue him.....

Whiskey??....

 

[Cloud Cover]

A lawyer deal drugs??....naw, THAT could never happen in our jails..... :

Whats funny is that he thinks he should be treated different because of his occupation....wouldn't that be some form of discrimination towards us non-lawyer types?? ;D  I should sue him.....

Oh stop....

On a related front, how many of these are kicking around?:

____________________________________________________________________________________________ 

C B C . C A  N e w s  -  F u l l  S t o r y :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Toronto teen arrested after mom turns in assault rifle
Last Updated Thu, 05 Jan 2006 10:28:29 EST
CBC News
A Toronto teenager has been charged with weapons and drug offences after his mother turned in a loaded AK-47 rifle to police.

The suspect's mother said she was shocked when she found the weapon and a magazine filled with bullets on her son's bed in their east-end home on Tuesday evening, the Toronto Sun reports.
 
AK-47 rifle (file photo) 
After she took the rifle to the police station, officers searched the home for more weapons.

The 17-year-old, who was not home at the time, was arrested later that evening after he returned to the house.

He was charged with 13 offences, including weapons charges and possession of cocaine.

The suspect cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.


Copyright ©2006 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - All Rights Reserved 

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Good for her, now if only the Judicial system could give him the same kick in the ass that I got at 16 and not some " hugs and teddy bears".

...and Whiskey, its not the profession I don't like, its the "society" who wants to run your shows.....just like I have no trouble insulting some of the plunkers running my union, but that doesn't mean I insult everyone in OPSEU because of it.
Beers? :cheers:

 

[Cloud Cover]

...and Whiskey, its not the profession I don't like, its the "society" who wants to run your shows.....just like I have no trouble insulting some of the plunkers running my union, but that doesn't mean I insult everyone in OPSEU because of it.
Beers? :cheers:

I know. You know I'm a sensitive guy.

Yes. Prior to the 31st, when hell is scheduled to get a little hotter.

 

[sigtech]

Good for her, now if only the Judicial system could give him the same kick in the *** that I got at 16 and not some " hugs and teddy bears".

We need to treat this scum bag kids like adults , but the problem is we send them away and all they get is smarter with better contacts. Couldn't we just shoot them on the spot and be done with it

 

[NavComm]

I just watched Harper live, and I liked it.  Some of the highlights were hiring an additional 1000 RCMP officers, providing federal funding for provinces/cities to hire 2500 Police Officers, higher mandatory minimums for 26 weapons offences, ending statutory release, and ending conditional sentences for violent/repeat/sexual offenders,and hiring more Customs Officers and arming them with firearms .  He also took some major swipes at Martin, mentioning things about Canadian values and what not.  Go Harper!

I know I'm a cynic when it comes to politics and politicians.

Here's my .02 on election promises made by Mr. Harper and Mr. Martin.

Election promises are just that, promises. The only significant difference between these ones and the ones you might make to say, your spouse or your best friend, is that these promises are made to be broken.

Once elected, those promises usually fall by the wayside and then the elected politician and his spin doctors devise ways to break the news to the gullible public that although they still want to carry through with those promises, the opposition or the lack of available funds, or the corruption of the previous gov't, or any other excuse that sounds good, has made it impossible for them to deliver said promises.

I don't see a lot of difference between what the Conservatives are promising they will deliver and what the Liberals are promising. I don't see how, if elected,  the Conservatives will deliver more than the Liberals would if they were re-elected. Because frankly, IMO neither party has much of a choice but to increase military spending and border safety,  and to get tough on crime right now. There is a lot of pressure from both inside and outside of Canada for the next government to deal with those issues asap.

The Conservatives, when they were in power were accused of all kinds of horrible things by the opposition, and now that they are in opposition they are merrily slinging mud at the other side hoping to distract us all from the real issues. I know the scandalous state of our government, but I'm not enthusiastically impressed with the other team either.

Jack Layton should make up his mind which side he wants to bash more or shut up entirely. Preferably the latter. I'm sick of watching him gleefully jump on one band wagon then hitch a ride on the next one as it passes by. He hasn't got a hope in hell of forming a government and he knows it, so IMO, like the Green Party, he should also be left out of the debates because he is insignificant. Oh I know, the NDP and the Bloc held the balance of power but that's just too scarey to continue contemplating, so I won't.

I agree with the Globe and Mail articles posted previously stating that there is no crime epidemic. Unfortunately, I don't think the majority of electors in Canada read the Globe and Mail, the ones that do will weigh the policies of the two main parties in Canada against their own personal beliefs and vote for that party, or maybe, like I did, vote for a proven candidate even if you're sick to death of the party that candidate is affiliated with. The vast majority of Canadians will watch the 6 o'clock news and depending on which side is better at convincing us all that the other side is a bunch of yo-yo's will get the votes.

You'll always have those people who will vote for Greens and independants, but overall this is a two-horse race and the NDP will slide up the middle along with the Bloc and on January 24, my world won't have changed in any significant way, no matter who we call "Mr. Prime Minister".

/end of cynical rant