Weekend shootings in Toronto have Bradford and Chow talking tough on crime

Chow has been visible throughout the response to the St. Clair shootings. She appeared at a media event just hours after the shooting, and at Monday’s police press conference alongside Police Chief Myron Demkiw.

“They have my full support with whatever resources they need,” she said in praising the work of police. She sought to portray the issue, at least in part, as an imported problem.

She added: “I have also spoken to the federal public safety minister (Gary Anandasangaree) and urged him to work with his American counterparts to stem the flow of illegal American guns coming onto Toronto streets.”

Hours after the St. Clair incident, a 25-year-old allegedly opened fire near a bar on the city’s waterfront before running over pedestrians in a stolen rideshare vehicle. He was free despite being arrested in a torture investigation just last year.

On Monday, Demkiw told reporters that shootings in Toronto are down 26 per cent compared to the same time last year. However, he added he was always reticent to bring up such numbers.

“It really doesn’t speak to the heart of the matter, which is how people feel,” he said. “And it’s very important for us to acknowledge that a weekend like this shakes our city … And at that moment, the statistics don’t mean that much. What matters is how people feel and what we do to restore a sense of safety and security.”

Geoffrey Dancy, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, told National Post that gun violence has no single cause or solution.

“I think that they’re kind of focused on vibes a little bit, to use the parlance of Gen Z,” he said of reactions by Bradford and Chow.

He added: “I don’t think that we should be convincing everyone that crime is a bigger problem in Toronto than it is, but I also don’t think that we should convince everyone that we don’t need to really change anything.”

He noted that New Orleans, where he lived for several years, has a gun violence homicide rate of 42 per 100,000 people. Toronto’s is less than 1 at 0.69 per 100,000.

This year to date, 14 people in Toronto have been killed by firearms and another 35 injured, with a total of 38 shootings and 92 firearm discharges, according to Toronto police statistics.

“More than a dozen people were shot in Toronto this weekend, three of them are dead, and the message to the people who ran for their lives, who were shot, to the folks caught up in the stampede of panic was look at the numbers,” Bradford said Tuesday.

“I am not here to debate numbers with anybody. I am glad that shootings are going down — the numbers should be zero – but people can’t conduct their lives according to statistics. Torontonians don’t live in a spreadsheet of numbers. Nobody is checking the dashboard before they walk out the door with their kid. They ask one simple question: do I feel safe?”

Demkiw was adamant the guns were coming from the United States.

“We recover crime guns regularly and the vast majority, 85 to 90 per cent of them, when they can be traced, are traced to the United States of America,” he said. “That’s been the trend for many, many years in this city.”

Chow added: “The city of Toronto will always work with the chief and the police and the festival organizers (to) look at the best way to keep people safe in these big festivals.”

She noted that Toronto has worked to increase security against vehicular attacks after last year’s Lapu-Lapu Day attack in Vancouver that resulted in 11 deaths.

She added: “As the chief has said, we have learned a great deal by collaborating through the FIFA World Cup viewing events …. We’ve learned a great deal by collaborating on a joint command centre. Are there some lessons coming out of that? Absolutely. And can we apply it to the festival? Let us work on that together.”

She also noted that TABIA, the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas, had recently met to discuss best practices in festival organization.

Bradford first ran for mayor in the June 2023 byelection but finished in eighth place, with just under 10,000 votes. However, a recent survey from Mainstreet Research shows a close race between Chow and Bradford this time.

In the June poll, when undecided voters were removed from the equation, 43 per cent said they would vote for Chow, versus 38 per cent for Bradford.

That poll, released June 23, also found that crime and safety was among the top three issues for voters at 23.5 per cent, only a couple of points behind traffic and congestion (27.3 per cent) and affordability (25.8 per cent).

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