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)

Political Instability, High Crime Rates, Poverty and Dengue Fever

"In another country there would be many sick but not as many deaths."
"The cure for dengue is political."
Eduardo Ortiz, adviser, Pan American Health Organization, Honduras

"As a parent [of a child with dengue], I wasn't well prepared."
"And as doctors, they weren't well prepared [to diagnose her child's illness]."
Wendy Carcamo, resident, Choloma, Honduras

"People are thinking about other problems [in their daily lives]."
"If I'm a mother and I have three children, four children, I'm going to be thinking about what I'm going to feed them, whether my son is running with the gangs."
"They'll be thinking least of all about dengue."
Dr.Dinorah Nolasco, regional health director, Cortes, Honduras

Children being treated for dengue fever at a hospital in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.  Credit...Daniele Volpe for The New York Times

There are other epidemics roiling parts of the world we hear little of, aside from the novel coronavirus striking China, that has the rest of the world on alert over its spread and threat as a new, unknown health danger. The World Health Organization has pointed out that developed areas of the world with thriving economies are well able to absorb the scientific and economic shock of dealing with a new virus that is demonstrating its potential to spread panic and death. Its concerns are mostly focused on less developed, less stable, less well-equipped emerging economies and how they will manage.

While international news media focus on the coronavirus, not much has been published to alert the world over an old concern, dengue fever, which is ravaging Honduras where 107,000 cases emerged last year killing over 175, in one of the worst dengue epidemics on record sweeping Central America killing a total of 400 people. Precisely the type of outbreak that many scientists and public health authorities warn may become more frequent and widespread in coming years.

An MSF health promotion officer speaks to children at the school in the La Lopez neighbourhood in Choloma, about how to prevent the spread of dengue and eliminate sources of infection. Honduras, April 2019.

Over 40 percent of the dengue deaths in Central America occurred in Honduras last year. Where issues such as government dysfunction, political unrest and public apathy have all contributed to its spread. Last year's outbreak exceeded that of the year before, where in 2018 three people died from the disease and in 2019, 175 succumbed. Transmitted by the Aedes mosquito known to thrive in urban areas in the world's tropical and subtropical regions, tens of millions of cases occur yearly in over 100 countries.

Symptoms include fever, internal bleeding and shock. And given that this is such a familiar disease, the symptoms so clearly identified, it is inexplicable that seven-year-old Jostin Pineda, taken to three private clinics by his mother, Wendy Carcamo, was misdiagnosed by each, and when the last of the doctors referred her to the region's main public hospital, so much time had elapsed that medical intervention was too late, and her child died.

This is a nation that suffers from high murder rates and widespread poverty. The public health system has been gutted through budget cuts and endemic corruption. Medical facilities lack the capacity to handle normal demands, much less that of an epidemic which has been particularly acute in the north of the country, the province of Cortes, its industrial heartland. It has a large migratory population of factory workers, a circumstance helpful in spreading the disease to other regions.

A patient suspected of having contracted dengue receiving treatment at a hospital in San Pedro Sula.  Credit...Daniele Volpe for The New York Times

One of the major factors that contributed to the spread of the epidemic was the shortage of trained personnel, admitted Dr. Dinorah Nolasco who described her medical teams' difficulty in gaining access to gang-ridden neighbourhoods. In Choloma, one of the main cities of Cortes, medical teams secured access to those neighbourhoods only following a meeting with community leaders who then negotiated with gang leaders of the areas that had become dengue hot spots.

Meteorological conditions were also identified as contributing to the outbreak, when Honduras endured severe droughts alongside bouts of intense rainfall, reflecting a pattern of increased weather variability which scientists feel are related to climate change. Residents in neighbourhoods without reliable public water supplies during extreme drought tend to store water in their homes, making them potential mosquito breeding sites. Heavy rainfall with subsequent flooding also provides breeding environments.

On a visit to Lopez Arellano, Dr. Nolasco as the regional health director in Cortes, visited the home of a family that had lost a child to dengue. Inspecting a basin where water was stored, she discovered hordes of mosquito larvae swimming about in the basin. Moving to the next home, the very same situation prevailed.

Health promoters measure a water tank so they can apply the exact amount of larvicide necessary for it to be effective. Choloma, Cortes, Honduras. October 2019.  

MSF/Arlette Blanco