Posted on 01/01/2003 3:15:28 AM PST by KneelBeforeZod
TORONTO - It was once called "Toronto the Good" for its law-abiding ways, but that image has faded recently as Canada's largest city battles a wave of gun violence centered on its Jamaican community and accusations police use racial profiling.
Almost every weekend this autumn -- and even the Christmas holidays -- brought reports that another young man had been gunned down on the streets of Toronto, which has long considered itself a clean, safe and multiethnic community, unstained by the violence and decay that have plagued many similarly sized U.S. cities.
Much of the violence has involved Toronto's sizable population of Jamaican immigrants.
In the most recent incidents, a man was killed and two others injured in separate shooting incidents on the Dec. 28 weekend.
This came after a man was shot at a crowded west Toronto shopping mall on Boxing Day, while another man was shot and killed Christmas Eve.
This brings the city's homicide total to 60 on the year, 28 of them by gunfire.
Since late October, at least 13 people have been killed by gunfire, while several more have been injured, and the media scrutiny has sharpened with every death.
"Toronto the Bad: Another bloody weekend leaves 3 shot, one dead," read a November headline in the Montreal Gazette.
At least nine of the victims were black and under the age of 30, focusing public attention on what police say is a growing trend of tit-for-tat gang violence in the city, much of which they say is centered in the heavily Jamaican neighborhoods of the city's northwest.
GANG WARS
"What we've seen, for the most part, are gangs fighting among each other, primarily for turf control and for the distribution of drugs," Norm Gardner, chairman of the Toronto Police Services Board, told Reuters.
"There seems to be a relationship between some of the gang activity in Toronto and Jamaica, where hit men are being imported to Jamaica from Toronto."
While only about 2 percent of Canada's 30 million population is black, the number jumps to about 10 percent in Toronto. Of those, about two-thirds are of Caribbean ethnicity, half of whom are Jamaican, according to government data.
Authorities in Jamaica recently warned that a turf war there could spill over to the streets of Toronto, prompting Police Chief Julian Fantino to say he will visit Jamaica in January to talk with security officials about common crime problems.
Community leaders say the core of the problem is poverty, as drug distributors prey on destitute teenagers, recruiting them from schools to sell drugs on the streets.
"It's not a cultural problem. It's a job problem. It's a business problem. I believe that young men are entrapped into this lifestyle," said Monica Willie, president of the Caribbean Association of Peel Region, a largely suburban area on Toronto's western border.
Willie, who immigrated to Toronto from Jamaica about 35 years ago, says much of the violence results from vendettas over unpaid drug debts.
"Young men who are poor get called out to go settle a score with someone who didn't pay up," she said.
Nevertheless, Toronto remains very safe by U.S. standards. According to government statistics, Toronto proper, with about 2.5 million people, had 59 homicides in 2001. Chicago proper, with 2.9 million people, had more than 600 last year.
Toronto's mayor, Mel Lastman, calls it "the most culturally diverse city in the world" with people from 170 different countries speaking more than 100 languages and dialects. The city's motto is "diversity our strength."
COMPARATIVELY SAFE
"It still is (a safe city), but it has problems like every other big city. When it comes to Toronto, compared to others, I think it's wonderfully safe," Lincoln Alexander, chairman of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, told Reuters.
Alexander, who was Ontario's first black lieutenant-governor and is also a former federal cabinet minister, was recently chosen to chair a conference on race relations, a meeting spurred by the fallout from a Sept. 19 article in the Toronto Star, Canada's biggest daily newspaper.
The Star reported that although Jamaican-born residents make up 2.4 percent of Toronto's population, they account for 9.5 percent of the total charges for violent offenses. It also noted that blacks charged with simple drug possession were taken to a police station more often than whites accused of the same crime and held twice as often as whites.
As well, the Star said, black motorists were disproportionately ticketed for so-called discretionary offenses that come to light after a motorist has been stopped.
The paper looked at police arrest figures from 1996 to early 2002, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
"Racial profiling has been going on here and any other place that you can think of, so it's nothing new. It just happened to break because of the Toronto Star article," said Alexander.
While police initially denied any hint of racial profiling, participants at the Nov. 25 meeting, which included police officials and several prominent politicians, concluded that racial profiling exists and must be stamped out.
"We acknowledge that there is racism in our society. There's bigotry in our society, and we can't say that we are free of that," said Gardner, who was quick to add that the Toronto Police Services Board does not tolerate bias-based or discriminatory types of policing.
"But I don't think the city's changing, and the city is very safe," he said.
Where have I heard this before? Well, obviously, it can't be their fault. Those peaceful Jamaicans from the islands of peace.
"There seems to be a relationship between some of the gang activity in Toronto and Jamaica, where hit men are being imported to Jamaica from Toronto."
So lets see, hit men being imported from Jamaica, but its not a "cultural" problem. Better round up some little old blue haired ladies and have them stripped searched, you don't want to be accused of racial profiling. God forbid you actually look for imported Jamaican hitmen when looking for gangland killings.
Gee, maybe your retarded, liberal, idiotic immigration policies have something to do with this?
Alway has been always will be.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.