Toronto's Crime and Defunded Police Dilemma

"Olivia Chow will defund the police, raise your taxes, and ram bike lanes on our busiest streets. As Mayor, I will hire more cops, freeze taxes, and get traffic moving."

"The choice is clear — it’s time to stop Olivia Chow."

"As former police chief, I had to deal with situations like this in the past [death threats]. But in that capacity, you have access to the tools and skilled investigators and the skill teams and resources necessary to really create the best plan."

"Under this circumstance [as a mayoral candidate] I don't have those privileges or accesses anymore. But my bigger concern really is for my staff."

Mark Saunders, former Toronto Police Chief, Toronto mayoralty candidate

 

"The suspect made threatening remarks about shooting mayoral candidates and showed what appeared to be a firearm."

"[The threats were made against] unnamed [mayoral candidates and represented a] blanket threat."

Const. Alex Li, spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service

Toronto mayoral candidate Olivia Chow takes part in a televised debate hosted Marivel Taruc, at the CBC Broadcast Centre, in Toronto, on June 6, 2023. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

"Chow, the widow of former New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton, has been a prominent voice in progressive politics for decades. But her path to victory is no sure thing. A record 102 candidates — including one representing a dog named Molly —  are competing in this year’s election."

"Central Toronto’s left-leaning electorate rallied around Chow when she first ran for mayor in 2014, but despite a flood of positive polling at the race’s outset, she lost momentum in the final weeks of the campaign and placed a distant third."

Jacob Lorinc, Bloomberg News

 

"To some observers, it looks like they’ve seen this movie before: Olivia Chow gets an early lead but can’t sustain it, and gets overtaken by someone else in the field."    

"I think that’s going to be harder this time around. The issues are just more complicated and wide ranging."

"As we approach the finish line of this election, and depending on what the polls look like, there will be pressure within those different ideological camps to drop out and support another candidate whose orientation is fairly similar. And that could happen both on the right and the left."

Myer Siemiatycki, professor emeritus of politics, Toronto Metropolitan University

Toronto is in the throes of a mayoralty race. The election takes place in six days' time. The number of candidates for the position was astronomical, but has now, after weeks of campaigning, come down to a handful of potential winners. Crime, law and order is one of the biggest items to be addressed, and most, but certainly not all, candidates have made it a priority issue. It is an issue of great importance to Torontonians, and recognized as such by those candidates identified as 'right-wing'.

 

The leading contender for the position, long-time city councillor with the most-recognizable name is NDPer Olivia Chow, and polling has given her the lead, at 30% of the vote. Crime and punishment is not on her agenda. Many years ago when Olivia Chow and Jack Layton were both city councillors they lived in and had possession of another apartment meant for assisted living for low-income residents. This is the mayoralty candidate who now bemoans that city residents cannot afford to buy homes at astronomical real estate prices in the city.

 

Once known as Toronto the Good, the city can no longer boast of a low crime rate. Over the past few years car thefts including armed ones have been skyrocketing, their numbers in lock step with the reduction of funding for the metropolitan police force. A number of successive city budgets have seen a dramatic drop in funding for the police department and although the last budget saw an increase, it was targeted toward salaries, not the hiring of new recruits and improved services.

 

From left to right: Toronto mayoral candidates Ana Bailão, Brad Bradford, Olivia Chow, Mitzie Hunter, Josh Matlow and Mark Saunders at a debate at George Brown College on May 24, 2023. (Nav Rahi/CBC)

 

Toronto has been plagued with violence across the city, many taking place on the Toronto Transit service, in its subways primarily, committed by deranged street people stabbing innocent people to death, shoving unsuspecting people from subway platforms onto tracks below. These events happen elsewhere as well, but Toronto is Ontario's and Canada's most populous city at 2.6 million and rapidly growing, and the number of crimes has escalated dramatically, linked to drugs, gangs, homeless, the mentally challenged. 

Between 2017 and 2021, car thefts rose 90 percent and increased another 42 percent in the last year; just coincidentally a specialized stolen vehicle group was eliminated, leading to the situation where dozens of vehicles are stolen nightly in carjackings; car thefts with weapon up 288 percent in the last year alone. Organized crime has flourished in lock step with the defunding of the police budget. Apprehended thieves frequently are granted bail, leaving them the leisure to re-offend. It's called 'catch-and-release'.

Toronto is no longer a safe, placid, comfortable city in which to live. There was a 21.3 rise in homicides last year, with robberies increasing by a third. Priority 1 calls represented by shootings and murders now takes 21 minutes for a response. Over three times longer than the reasonable target time. Priority 2 calls, for serious crimes outside manslaughter is 50 minutes. Toronto Police Service failed to meet its target response time 72 percent of the time for Priority 1 calls and 92 percent for Priority 2 calls in 2021.

 

 

Current police Chief Myron Demkiw asserts that officers should arrive at a reasonable time to such emergencies, representative of the most fundamental commitment of the police force to ensure public trust, yet that goal has become unrealizable given the reality of the force's shrunken share of the municipal budget. There are now 600 fewer uniformed officers than in 2010, while every police officer struggles to serve 30 percent more residents as the population increases.

When auditor general Beverly Romeo-Beehler was commissioned last year to analyze where further cuts could be realized, it was her finding that Toronto is hugely underserved with officers for a city of its size. Without an investment of greater funding for policing, the situation would deteriorate even further, she advised. Leading mayoralty candidate Olivia Chow, on her past record, is expected to continue defunding the police. Two other candidates, also left-wing will commit to further defunding as well.

According to recently retired police chief James Ramer, more Torontonians have died as a result of votes to defund the police by councillors, among them those now running for city mayor. 

Three Toronto mayoral hopefuls, Matlow, Saunders and Bradford, indicated their campaign activities were disrupted on Thursday as police searched for a man who threatened to shoot several candidates. (Michael Wilson/CBC)

 

Israeli Palestinian Cities Strangled by Palestinian-on-Palestinian Violence

"Many Arab Israelis blame the violence on organized crime, and accuse police of devoting too few resources to root it out in Arab cities, towns and neighborhoods. Experts, policymakers and activists argue that even as Israeli police have cracked down on crime among Israeli Jews, not enough has been done to combat endemic violence in the Arab community, which has long suffered from official neglect."

"Over the past few years, Arab criminal groups have proliferated and taken over spaces vacated by state institutions and police. A new reality has been created in Arab towns and cities, one in which powerful protection rackets have access to an enormous quantity of weapons, lend money and collect payments at the barrel of a gun, and open fire at Arab mayors and their family members."

"The metastasizing phenomenon has also fueled gang wars between different groups jockeying for turf and clientele, turning towns into battlefields and sometimes catching innocent bystanders in the crossfire. 'It is the Arab crime organizations who rule Israel today when it comes to the criminal underworld. They are strong, determined, forceful and they don’t screw around. They have enough weapons for an entire army', an anonymous senior cop told Channel 12 in 2018."

"The underworld violence is mostly confined to Arab areas of the country, as seen in the disproportionate number of killings among the Arab community compared to Jewish areas of the country. Even though Arab Israelis constitute roughly 21% of the population, they accounted for 71% of the 125 homicides in Israel in 2019."

Aaron Boxerman, The Times of Israel, 31 December 2020

Police at the scene of a fatal shooting in the northern town of Bi’ina, October 4, 2020 (Israel Police)

What is it about Palestinian history and culture that might be responsible for a seeming proclivity to violence and gangsterism? The Palestinian Authority ostensibly has no influence on Palestinians living in Israel as part of the Israeli population with full citizenship. It does, on the other hand, exercise influence on all Palestinians when Mahmoud Abbas exhorts Palestinians to 'resist' the 'occupation', when he sees to it that Palestinian children under his autonomous rule are taught from Israel-hating curricula where Jews are portrayed as killers of Palestinians and children are urged to join the 'resistance' and plan their future as martyrs.

 

Arab residents of Jerusalem throw rocks at Israeli police near the Lions Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City on October 6, 2000, at the outset of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Palestinian citizens of Israel are known to succumb to the invitation extended to them by the PA to vent their anger against Israelis and they do this with regularity through knifings, vehicular attacks and other means by which they hope to exact maximum damage through killing Israeli Jews and being glorified by the PA as martyrs to the cause, receiving generous monthly stipends if they're incarcerated, and if they die while committing atrocities those monthly payments for 'heroism' go to their families. It cannot help but have an effect on those within Palestinian society vulnerable to suggestive hatred.

Palestinian citizens living in Israel have called increasingly upon Israeli police to solve the problem of Palestinian-on-Palestinian crime. The response of the Israeli Police has been less than impressive to those calling for an end to the fear and violence they live with. There is that age-old conundrum of a society failing to influence its members for the better, that when an institutional force of another society enters the picture to try to bring order and security to bear, invariably criticism will surface to the effect that the 'intruding' society has been overbearing in its response.

Israel, sensitive to the never-ending criticism coming at its governance from outside sources such as states within the European Union, always highly critical of Israeli action as it applies to Palestinians, are quick to pounce declaring that Israel has trod on Palestinians' human rights. There will always be many within the Israeli-Palestinian community who plead for police action to clean up the crime the community is forced to live with, while others from within the community await the opportunity to claim undue force brought to bear by an 'apartheid' government.

The poisonous clamour from the international community over any hints that Israel's police force might exact stern measures to persuade the Palestinian criminal class that their days of free reign to sow terror among their own is over, goes a long way in dissuading the government of Israel from taking such action. To be sure, Israeli police respond to the violence, but in the same token even while they are aware of what is occurring, the reality is that information and evidence from the community itself to aid the police in their work is hard to come by.

Obviously for the simple enough reason that it is seen as a 'betrayal' for Palestinians to aid Israeli police in cleaning up the gangsters among them along with the certain knowledge that they and theirs will be punished by retributive action. Both sectors are between a rock and a hard place; the police for fear of recriminations by the foreign press and their government agencies, the Palestinian communities for fear of their own victimizing them even further through indiscriminate killings.

 

Arab Israelis protest against violence, organized crime and recent killings in their communities, in the Arab town of Majd al-Krum in northern Israel on October 3, 2019. (Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)

 

Matters have become so desperate from within the Palestinian towns and cities cowering in fear from the violence of the gangs among them that huge protests have been  taking place calling on the Israeli government to protect its Palestinian citizens -- from other Palestinian citizens who have no regard whatever for the security and human rights of their own in the greater interests of terroristic glory and the acquisition of ill-gotten gains.

“I lost my husband and two children. They were shot dead right in front of us in our home, and yet there have been no arrests so far. In 2012, I participated in a Knesset hearing. I felt optimistic when the prime minister turned to me and promised that the case would be handled, and that they would find the murderers, but nothing actually came of that. When I saw that no progress was being made, I asked the district police in Haifa about where the investigation stood. One police investigator told me, ‘I can tell you who came into your house and shot your husband and children, but we need evidence.’ I refused to accept his response. I didn’t want to know who shot them, because I am sure that if I was Jewish, they would have found the murderer and arrested him in a matter of 24 hours."

Siham Egbariya from the Arab city of Umm al-Fahm

Arab Israelis protest against violence, organized crime and recent killings among their communities, in the Arab town of Majd al-Krum, northern Israel, October 03, 2019. (David Cohen/FLASH90)

“Contrary to the stereotype, these are not ‘crime families.’ In the families of those involved in organized crime, you’ll often find doctors and lawyers — and a crime boss, whose foot soldiers are mostly from outside the family", explained Walid Haddad, formerly a 15-year Israeli law enforcement officer in the Public Security Ministry, now a criminologist teaching at Western Galilee College

"In general, banks hesitate to provide loans in our Arab towns. This has led individuals, breadwinners, and business owners in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic to take loans on the black market. Most of them are asked to pay absurd amounts."

“How do these groups make people pay? They threaten their lives and their property. And those people who do manage to pay, in practice, fund the next series of crimes."

"Homicides are just one parameter in the violence: Attempts to gun down mayors, threats, extortion, blackmail, domestic violence, use of weapons in disputes."

Joint List MK Mansour Abbas

Police at the scene of a deadly shooting in the central city of Lod on December 28, 2020. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

   

The Great Indian Democracy That Fails Half Its Population

"India’s criminal justice system remains inaccessible and insensitive to most survivors of sexual violence. These survivors face barriers in getting their cases registered with the police, have inadequate legal support, and are forced to wait years to have their cases heard."
"According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, around 100 sexual assaults are reported to police every day. Shocking though that is, the actual number of attacks is far higher, with a government survey finding that 99.1% of sexual violence cases go unreported, often due to pressure from family members."
"Immediate, systemic change is needed to ensure expeditious trials and day-to-day hearing of cases, such as took place in the Kathua trial. Justice needs to be done and be seen to be done so that all survivors of sexual violence can place their faith in the legal system, safe in the knowledge that they will be heard and their claims treated seriously."
"The onus is now on the Indian government to move beyond token action and ensure that the criminal justice system is responsive to survivors needs and is equipped to handle the high volume of sexual violence cases that are currently pending."
"Better implementation of existing laws, the introduction of much needed procedural reforms, and clearing the large backlog of cases pending in criminal courts, are all key. So is handling sexual violence cases with greater sensitivity, a more accountable police force, and bigger budgetary allocation by the government to end gender-based violence."
"This includes giving sufficient funding to women’s rights organizations that are delivering vital support services at the grassroots to women and girls."
Divya Srinivasan, South Asia Consultant, Equality Now

NEW DELHI, Jun 28 2019 (IPS) - Early in 2018, India was shaken by the horrific details surrounding the abduction, gang rape, and murder of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua, a district in the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

One of the most populous nations on Earth, with its diverse population, languages, religious devotion, highly intelligent people achieving recognition in the arts, sciences and technology, along with those in the nation mired in extreme poverty, shut out of advantages and suffering under a still-resonant caste system though it is now illegal, India has its problems. The fundamentalist orthodox among the majority Hindu population and the extremists among the huge albeit minority Muslim population along with simmering Sikh separatist agitation keeps the government on its toes.

Beset with so many difficult headaches there is one yet more, and it victimizes fully half of the Indian population; its girls and women, susceptible to sexual violence, rape, murder and a combination of atrocities that beggar description. In India, more than in most other countries, the lives of girls and women are fraught with the danger of extreme violence, in a culture that refuses to surrender its view of women as expendable objects to be viciously exploited and discarded.

Indian women no longer keep their heads down hoping to avoid notice leading to harassment and attacks. They now publicly campaign for protection from predators. Although the Indian government has made some changes to its laws favouring a more stringent application of justice for women and punishment for their tormentors the prevailing attitude by police and security officials goes into fallback mode of shrugging and ignoring the situation. This is just what happened time and again in the state of West Bengal in the case of a resident who terrorized his neighbours.

The son of a village council leader with the Trinamool Congress party, Mafizul Haz, accused of violent crimes among which rape and bullying stand out, terrorized his community with complete impunity. He remained protected in the coddling aura of his father's political influence as the younger son of Ainul Haq, a council leader -- where in rural India the council system frequently replaces the authority of police, courts and jailers all at the same time.

And although there were countless accusations launched and registered against the man in the Tufanganj police station, no remedial action was ever taken; he has never been held to account for, nor held to be responsible for his vicious behaviour and psychopathic actions harming others. Which led the villagers to inaugurate their own form of action to punish the criminal living among them. Although the man probably deserved to be lynched that would without doubt have brought the wrath of the village council to snap to attention on the villagers themselves not the perpetrator of their problems.

Fed up finally with the lack of attention to their pleas for intervention by authorities, the residents of Balabhut in the district of Cooch Behar gathered at night at the predator's property to quietly and swiftly dig a deep trench surrounding his house, effectively marooning him from the village and its victimized population. Placing him in a position where, when he became aware of the situation that he was under siege, caused him to unwillingly plead with those taking revenge, to provide him with food and water.

Home of Ainul Haq’s son Villagers dug a five-feet deep gully around the home of Ainul Haq’s son