Reducing violent crime

With seven months gone in 2009, the city of Toronto has recorded 31 murders so far this year. According to the Toronto Sun, this compares to 35 at the same time last year and 45 up to the same time in 2007. These 31 murders equates to a yearly total of 54 or 55 murders.

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The yearly murder count in Toronto jumped from 64 in 2004 to 79 the following year and 84 in 2007. The year 2005 that ended with the horrific Boxing Day shooting that claimed the life of 15-year-old honour student and athlete Jane Creba is now commonly referred to as the “Year of the Gun”. To the surprise of many and no doubt the dismay of a few, the lower murder rate is attributed to an increase in policing. Who’d a thunk it! After the infamous Year of the Gun ended the Toronto Police service instituted a program called Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy or TAVIS. When it becomes apparent that a certain area has become a trouble spot, more officers are deployed there including four of the police service’s Rapid Response Teams. At the beginning of this month, the Ontario government announced that TAVIS would get a further $10 million over the next two years to continue their work. The fact that the province is willing to spend more of the taxpayers’ money does not mean that the program has been a success (these are the same boys and girls who sunk money into GM) but it has been. From the beginning of January 2009 until May 3 there were 14 shootings and 6 murders in one police division in the northwest part of the city and so at the beginning of May the police decided to employ TAVIS in that area. Police Chief Bill Blair was quoted in the July 27th issue of the Toronto Sun as saying that the area had gone 4 weeks without a shooting. The Chief added that the entire city actually went 68 days this year without a gun murder. The results of TAVIS are that more bad guys and guns have been taken off the streets than otherwise would have occurred and that the law abiding residents feel safer with more police in their area. The silence from those on the left about the success that the police are having is deafening. The left that includes many hardcore cop haters used to spout daily nonsense about how to end or at least reduce violent crime. Criminals were not really criminals but “disadvantaged youth”; a term that is an insult to every young person who is living in difficult circumstances and who doesn’t go around shooting people. The left, including the city’s mayor and his sycophants on council, think that the answer to solving violent crime is to prevent law abiding people from having guns and building more basketball courts. The hug-a-thug crowd would then conclude all of this with a rousing chorus of Kumbaya. Many of the groups that used to protest the actions of the police have now fallen silent. Gone are the days when Black groups took to the streets to complain about how the police deal with minorities. There is virtually no complaint about how the police implement their anti-violence strategy even though the program includes asking young people for ID in the absence of suspected wrongdoing that gives rise to at least the argument that their rights are being violated. One advantage of being a leftie is that you never have to apologize for being wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault, usually society’s, for not forking over enough money. So we’ll never hear them admit that increased policing is effective in reducing violent crime. But of course it is.

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