Let's take back our city

Let's take back our city

By JOE WARMINGTON

You'd think by all of the fuss in front of a high school in Scarborough yesterday this was something new for the bloody city of Toronto.

Another black kid shot, another police chase for a gunman. More blood to clean up.

Maybe this time we have finally had enough and something (whatever the heck that is) will be done to stop this warfare on our streets, in our neighbourhoods, next to the playgrounds, basketball courts, on the highways and at our schools.

Please! This was a Tuesday. That's all. The sun finally did go down and it came up again today. Three people were shot dead and one was lucky not to be.

Maybe there was even more than that after the paper and website deadlines. Statistics show it's likely.

The insanity of our great city and region is that this is all just routine.

If my math is right, the homicide at Jane and Finch was number 50 for Toronto 2008 -- 29 thanks to a gun. A sixteen-year-old at Bendale Business and Technical School at Midland and Lawrence was 2008 shooting victim number 227. The 16-year-old murder victim was number 228.

All of this happening on day 260 of 2008. This being a Leap year there are 105 more to go. Keep your calculator handy.

We are not shocked. Heck, we are probably not even appalled. What happened yesterday is not original. Still, what a circus. What drama! Helicopters were hovering above -- almost as plentiful as police cars and TV station live microwave trucks. Police Chief Bill Blair was on the scene. There were anxious parents standing behind yellow tape and there were police and media everywhere.

Standing there with veterans like photographers Mike Peake and Alex Urosevic, and two of our hot new, younger reporters Ben Spencer and Marc Kilchling, I made the comment that if this shooting had have occurred in a strip mall parking lot, or at Jane and Finch, there would be less action.

Sadly, later in the day, veteran Toronto Sun reporter Ian Robertson was at Jane and Finch and confirmed that by describing the lack of TV trucks, helicopters and police brass.

"I guarantee you if that body dumped out on the 401 last week happened in an alley in Rexdale, you are not writing about it," said one police source.

Maybe we should be writing about all of it. Maybe we should follow every case through the courts and see what sentence is rendered. Maybe we better press our politicians to stop the ideological fighting and try compromises to help end this craziness. Maybe we can build more prisons and still fund opportunities for marginalized neighbourhoods.

Maybe there are solutions to do this. Maybe all levels of government, the courts, the police, the social agencies and the schools could lock themselves in a room and come up with out-of-the-box ideas. Or we could just do it like we have before.

There were two memorable events for me that I believe gives us a pretty good indication of where we are at. The first was something Chief Bill Blair said: "I know we will get lots of help with this from the students. This is their school and they want it safe."

The chief is correct. It should work this way and yet there are almost 20 unsolved homicides in Toronto in 2008. It's not the police's fault if people don't talk -- sometimes even the ones shot.

The second was when the students left the school to an awaiting herd of media and some young hoods of several racial profiles stood at the exit point and shouted "no snitching, no snitching." I'd arrest them for obstruction just for saying that and tell them to shut their mouths, too.

I would also suggest we fund tens of millions to a first-class snitch fund -- and make today's successful Crime Stoppers look like an office raffle. I'd have a sliding scale of cash for those providing information for retrievals of guns and weapons, to tips on arrests and eventual convictions. Lots of cash too and at the end of each year, for all of those who helped put these terrorists behind bars, I'd have a $1 million lottery for one of them to win.

I'd make snitching cool. And profitable. I'd go to war with these punks and let them know it's not just their bloody city.