"...One of the Safest..."

"We've had a couple of isolated incidents.  I know this is the safest city in the world.  I've always said that.  I truly believe it.  We must use every legal means to make life for these thugs miserable, to put them behind bars, or to run them out of town.  we will not rest until being a gang member is a miserable, undesirable life."  Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

It's true, Toronto was, once, one of the safest of Canadian cities.  But Canada and Toronto (and Vancouver) have inherited a new gang-and-guns culture that once did not exist in the country and in its cities.  Although no one seems to be mentioning it, the gangs-and-guns culture is involved with immigration and imported mores quite foreign in their nature to the Canadian social contract.

In Vancouver it's oriental youth who seem to gravitate toward that kind of troubling lifestyle that creates conflict and social disharmony.  In Toronto, it is primarily youth from the West Indies.  The reasons are different, the end result seems somehow similar.  In Toronto there is the problem of difficult-to-assimilate people from the Caribbean where women have children with few fathers to help raise them. 

Role models become older youth who have discovered a way of life that pleases them involving drugs and gangs - and guns.  While their families often live on welfare, they themselves have ample cash to spare from the drug trade.  And  younger males look at that as the ultimate solution for their futures as well, because achieving an education is a low priority.

Canada's and Toronto's liberal-minded elite will always find reasons for this kind of dystopian existence, where those on the public dole are set aside in public housing and there is little ambition for the younger generation to become educated, aspire to a satisfying working life of independence and self-respect.  They speak of 'disadvantaged' communities needing greater levels of social assistance.

They speak of spending more money on outreach, to encourage young men to complete their schooling, get job training, and find work that complements their aspirations.  This soul-searching of the public agencies, the police, social workers, the municipal administration, is an exercise that is freshened each time a public catastrophe ensues, another shooting death.

And there was a deadly gunfight at a block party in east-end Toronto this past Monday, where two young people were shot dead, and 26 others injured by random shooting, several quite seriously.  Street gangs and their antipathy toward one another, their threats and raging hatred, each considering themselves superior to the other, and their jealous territorial rights leading to conflict have become a seeping sore in a stable society.

The authorities like to maintain a careful, concerned watch.  The police take their responsibilities to ensure that no confrontations ensue, seriously.  But no one informed them of the planned street party, because the public housing community does not view the police with affection or trust.  On social media someone wrote: "Father God, guide and protect my friends from thy enemy tonight. Let us not war but party."

That was what a young woman wrote.  Quite unlike what a young man wrote elsewhere on social media: "I know nuff places we can leave bodies."  Gang violence has become a commonplace.  Shocking and troubling beyond belief.  "We are very concerned not only with the quick resolution and solving of this crime, but the potential for retaliatory violence, which we often see in this type of event", stated a shaken Police chief Bill Blair.

They're unlikely, the Toronto Police Force, to get much help from those who were present at the party, roughly two hundred people.  Who view the police with suspicion.  Who will not go out of their way to reveal what they know.  Ironically enough, the 14-year-old girl who was shot dead was well liked by her community.  Who surely owe her something?  Other than seeking revenge on the others?

Worse, and inexplicably the 23-year-old man who was also shot dead was a York University criminology graduate, an honour roll student.  His degree, he felt, would be his entree into a career with the police force, in forensics, perhaps.  He was a volunteer, trying to persuade other younger men and boys to do something for themselves.  Helping them with homework, playing sports with them; a social mentor.

"He was a very humble child.  He doesn't get int any trouble.  He is into studying, he's a smart guy", said his cousin.  "My mom keeps asking who can she blame?  She doesn't know who to blame.  This isn't supposed to happen", said his older sister, mourning the unexpected loss of her beloved brother.