A Little Background
Boxing Day, for those of you not familiar with it, is a statutory holiday in Canada (as well as the UK, Australia and New Zealand) that takes place on December 26th. While folklorists have debated its origins for years, it's associated with post-Christmas bargain sales these days. Stores typically open early and sell their wares at sale prices, often at drastic markdown. Most stores keep the sales going all week, but Boxing Day marks the start of the bargains -- and the crowds. Sales-wise, what the day after Thanksgiving is to Americans, the day after Christmas is to Canadians.The Yonge/Dundas intersection has been big hangout for Accordion City teens since I was one. It's right on top of a subway station, which makes it very accessible. There's an H&M, a Gap, and an Old Navy all within falling distance of this intersection, and if you walk a block south, you'll also hit a Roots, Urban Outfitters and the entire Eaton Centre shopping mall.
Walk a block north to Yonge and Gould, and you'll be at the an intersection featuring HMV, Sam the Record Man and Sunrise Records, a Foot Locker, Pizza Pizza, Future Shop and a number of other clothing and electronics shops. For a teenager who's flush with a little extra Christmas gift cash, this is one of the go-to spots downtown (the other being my old neighbourhood, Queen Street West).
Needless to say, this intersection is always jam-packed with people on Boxing Day. During the unemployed Christmas of 2002, I busked the corner on Boxing Day and made $250 in about five hours.
The Shooting
On the afternoon of boxing day, a drive-by shooting took place at Yonge and Gould. Witness reports say that two men in a BMW were seen leaning out the windows and firing towards the sidewalk on the west side of the street. Although they were apparently firing at members of a rival gang, a number of innocent bystanders, including an off-duty police officer (who didn't have his sidearm with him, since he was off-duty), were injured. Worse still, a fifteen-year old girl, Jane Creba, was killed. She is the 78th homicide victim this year, 52 of which were shootings.
The two men who are believed to have been in the BMW were arrested some distance away from the shootings at Castle Frank station. One of them is 17 years old and under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, cannot be named. The other is 20-year old Andre Thompson, whose background reads like a character from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas:
Mr. Thompson, who remains in custody until his next court appearance, was released just before Christmas from Maplehurst prison near Milton, Ont.
He had served 30 days for his role in a convenience-store robbery.
For most of the past two years he had been staying with his cousin, Marsha Grant, 27, who has two young children and lives in a public housing complex in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood.
Mr. Thompson, the father of a one-year-old boy, had been working at a nearby restaurant as a chef.
Fresh from the joint, there's a "baby mama" somewhere in the picture, of no fixed address and couch-surfing in one of Toronto's most notorious 'hoods. This bodes ill.
The end of the article would be laughable if the story behind it weren't so tragic. Thompson's cousin, with whom he was staying, can't quite bring herself to believe that he was involved...
...but at the same time, was kicking him out because the cops were keeping an eye on him.Ms. Grant said she was shocked to learn that he was caught up in the events on Yonge Street on Boxing Day, but she strongly doubts that he was the shooter.
"Andre would not be so stupid as to fire a gun into a crowd like that," she said.
Look, lady, I know that sometimes one gets undue heat simply for not being white, but your cousin just finished 30 days for robbery and has been released into the community. It's the police's job to keep tabs on him.She last saw him on Christmas Eve, when she told him he was no longer welcome to stay with her because of the constant police interest in his movements.
An Inspiring Rant
Someone I know got started on a rather long-winded rant about the recent spate of shootings here in Accordion City, how immigrants were just taking advantage of our open society and how unsafe he felt since coming back from New York.The "immigrants were just here to take advantage" remark was easy to tackle in his case. The reason he'd come back here from NYC was that he'd been deported. After living there illegally for the better part of a decade, he was stopped at the border after a quick visit here, unable to provide any sort of proof that his primary residence was here in Canada. (If you're wondering about what this person was like, I can summarize him without compromising his identity: caucasian of Anglo descent, works in marketing -- not the sort of person who gets charged with "flying while brown"). He may not have entered the country hidden in the back of cargo truck or started the work day by waiting for a truck to pick him up to take him to a below-minimum-wage odd job, but he was an illegal immigrant, there to take advantage just the same. In debate clubs everywhere, this sort of self-contradiction on the part of your debating opponent is called a "gift".
He did me a favour by ranting, however: he inspired me to go and dig deeper.
The Numbers
I'd been looking up homicide statistics for Toronto when my acquaintance began his rant, so I decided to expand my search to include New York City. At the same time, Wendy, who's from Boston, was remarking that her hometown experiencing a record number of homicides, so I began to look up Boston's numbers. Then, in order to get a better comparison, I decided to look up the same stats for an American city that is often said to be comparable to Toronto in terms of area and population: Chicago. The table below shows the data I was able to gather:Homicides (1998 - 2005)
(Sources are listed at the end of this entry.)| Year | Boston | Chicago | New York | Toronto |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | 34 | 704 | 924 | 56 |
| 1999 | 31 | 641 | 903 | 49 |
| 2000 | 39 | 631 | 952 | 61 |
| 2001 | 66 | 665 | 646 | 61 |
| 2002 | 60 | 648 | 575 | 60 |
| 2003 | 41 | 599 | 596 | 61 |
| 2004 | 64 | 448 | 572 | 65 |
| 2005 (so far) | 71 | 444 | 515 | 78 |
My Calculus prof used to always say that many math problems become much simpler if you "draw a pretty picture". I concur, so here's the tabular data above, plotted as a scatter graph with lines (click the graph to see it at full size):
With New York and Chicago in the picture, the y-axis scale which counts the number of homicides) is so large that the Boston and Toronto graphs look almost flat. To better visualize the data, I've made another scatter graph showing only the Boston and Toronto data (once again, click it to see it at full size):
The numbers took some time to gather. It seems as though many police departments are reticent when it comes to posting crime and especially violent crime stats online. In the end, I found that Googling newspaper articles for end-of-year crime tallies turned out to be my best approach.
Quick Analysis
I'll probably go over the numbers and would like some discussion over the next little while, but here's a quick analysis based on the numbers and a day or two's thinking about them.New York has remarkably improved over the past 8 years. As you can see in the graph, there's a steady downward trend in the numbers. In the period covered by the graph, the number of homicides there has dropped by 44%. If you were to go back to 1990, this drop becomes way more dramatic: the drop from 1990's homicide count of 2,254 represents a decline in murders by over three-quarters. Chicago has also improved, with 37% fewer homicides between 1998 and now.
Toronto and Boston are experiencing the opposite: both cities are showing an upward trend in homicides. Over the same period, Toronto's murders have increased by 39% and Boston's by 108%.
Of course, these numbers would be more meaningful if applied as a ratio of homicides to population. Murder rates are most often measured in terms of murders per 100,000 population. Based on metropolitan populations (taken from Wikipedia), Toronto's 2005 murder rate to date is 1.5, while Boston's is 1.2. In the meantime, Chicago's is 4.8 and New York's is 2.3.
So far, we have the "what" behind the story. The "why", and more importantly, what I like to call the "Gideon Strauss Question" -- "what is to be done?" is going to take more time. I'll post more thoughts later, but in the meantime, if you have any opinions or even better, data, please feel free to put in your two cents in the comments.
Appendix: Where the Numbers Came From
BostonChicago
- http://qrc.depaul.edu/aandrews/Chicago%20Homicide/
1%20-%20Chicago%20Homicide%20Series.doc - http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-01-02-city
-murders_x.htm - http://www.chicagoreporter.com/2000/5-2000/05-2000/
052000homicide.htm - http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-murd28.html
- http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm
- http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/
ny-bc-ny--homicides-newyork
1223dec23,0,3164277.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork - http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-01-02-city-
murders_x.htm - http://qrc.depaul.edu/djabon/Articles/ChicagoCrime20030101.htm
- http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/summaries/reader/
0,2061,555972,00.html
Office phone:
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I'm sure this will get dumped on as a typical anti-US attack, I believe that one of the factors in TO's gun-crime problem may be a cultural one.
Wait, let me finish. More and more, US culture, and in particular, the gangsta-rap thing, predominates youth culture (and not just in Canada, of course). So, perhaps the combination of that, with its mythicization of gang violence, and hard-poverty, produces real results on the streets. The hard-poverty is not new, and nor are the guns, legal or illegal. Might it be a cultural sea-change that is tossing TO and other places around?
Here's where I think it deviates:
If you have a comedian making jokes, that's one thing, people can make jokes but it doesn't really impact their lifes.
If people though don't have a perspective, but are bombarded with the images and ideas that if you are a gangsta you can become someone..... Well, I guess chances are good that some people think that may just be an idea.
I think it comes really down to options and perspectives, someone who has the ability to make a living and not starve is probably a lot less likely to join a gang or try to "force" his riches.
Someone who has nothing (or perceives it that way), may be a lot more likely to actually take "matters into their own hands."
No, the Gangsta Rap thing alone isn't the problem, such problems are way more complex than that, but I am sure we'll find politicians who'll throw themselves at it with vigor.
It is already starting anyways, they talk about putting up security cameras now downtown, right, as if they would have prevented the shooting.
What I wonder is, how come this same level of outrage didn't happen when four-year-old Shaquan Cadougan was shot four times; another innocent victim of a drive-by shooting.
You don't suppose that his being a black kid living in the Jane-Finch area had something to do with it, do you?
I do agree with you to some extent that the fact the victim in this case was an attactive, white, blonde girl probably does give it more play (as Joey's indicated by the national paper's front page, that picture is getting A LOT of exposure) as cynical as that sounds.
However, that this shooting took place on the busiest shopping day of the year, on the busiest street in Canada, at 5 PM, involving multiple persons/shots/victims makes it astoundingly brazen.
with regard to media attention to black murder victims. of course we could point out that most common murder victims in T.O. are young black men but that would be racial profiling, so we will just ignore this fact and talk about "the community," and the need for more neighbourhood basketball courts.
prima facie, I am sympathetic to a victim like amon beckles. but then i think about the circumstances and I begin to think that the kid had it coming. ignoring any choices that he and jamal hemmings may have made which led to jamal's murder, amon's decision to leave his freinds funeral TO HAVE A SMOKE is a demonstrative lack of self-discipline. i would expect that a good friend would stay for the service but perhaps Mr. Beckles thought "damn guy, this is mo' drama, i'm a get me a smoke."
I can't figure out what the hell these thugs were thinking, doing this in such a public place. Was it to get noticed? Or was it to prove they aren't afraid, that their enemies aren't safe anywhere? Such a stupid stupid thing to happen to anyone.
Remember getting "rolled" for your docs?
Perhaps violent movies etc are not to blame, but every action movie out there involves shooting into crowds or driving like a maniac with no collateral damage. Is it naive to suggest that in addition to the social programs that get so talked up around election time, these "kids" need solid media education?
-Adina
For those of you not familiar with Toronto in the 1980s, "The Untouchables" were a notorious gang of young, mostly white and affluent teenagers who named themselves because they believed the Young Offenders Act made them relatively "untouchable" by the law. Around that time, everyone knew the word-of-mouth warning that travelled across the city: "Don't wear your Doc Martens at the Eaton Centre, or the UT's will take them!"
I never met an Untouchable, but I had a run-in with a "Soc".
The "Socs" (pronounced "Soashes", or for the singular, "Soash") named themselves after the gang in the S.E. Hinton novel The Outsiders, or more accurately, the movie based on that novel. A girl attending a dance at my high school had somehow gotten into the Soc's bad books and they were waiting for her outside the dance, presumably to rough her up. I was one of the organizers of the dance and offered to sneak her and her friends out the back and give them a lift home. We were spotted at the last minute, and one of the Socs tried to make a run for the car, but we were already moving. I ended up running over his foot, and the last I saw of that little bugger, he was lying on the parking lot, clutching his shoe.
As far as a solid media education goes, I think that should be part and parcel of a larger subject that all students should be taught: critical thinking.
Anonymous Bosch.
I think that parents are solely responsible for teaching children this skill.
As for Boxing Day being "busiest shopping day of the year," I think anyone who actually went shopping that day (I did) would agree it may well have been the quietest one in history. Not just downtown but everywhere.
Perhaps Boxing Day wasn't busy this year (Wendy was ill, so I stayed home), but I remember wading through crowds of Asia-like density during previous Boxing Days.
The Wednesday before was nuts. You could feel the tension in the stores, and on the streets. I saw more bad driving that day then I had all year. But by Friday it had cooled down considerably. One of my stops was the main Canadian Tire near Yonge and Bloor and I had NEVER seen it so dead. For the first time in history there was no line-up at the cash register.
Christmas Eve was even stranger. I was downtown early, expecting the usual rush and -- not to be callous -- you could have fired a machinegun in any direction and not hit anyone. Except maybe me, of course.
On the other hand Future Shop hadn't opened yet. That was the place that always seemed bursting with shoppers this year.
I get the feeling that many people perceive the increase behind youth violence as a lack of consequences for one's actions.
The Young Offenders Act is seen as having no teeth.
The YOA was a way to insure that youthful stupidity didn't taint the chance at successful life.
It's sad that through the actions of a small group, the YOA will begin to be dismantled.
It has good reason for being, yet has been abused so much in a relatively short period of time.
I don't know if prison time works as a deterrent.
I remember watching an interview with one of the investigators of the Sharon Tate murders.
He pointed out that following incarceration, Manson's followers standard of living actually increased.
... a roof, a place to sleep, exercise, 3 squares, etc.
This may not be true for these recent T-DotGunBabies, but the court system obviously isn't serving as enough of a deterrent.
I kind of like the way the Indian elders used to deal justice.
You are unfit to live in our civilized society.
You are exiled.
We could start a community in the wilderness of Nunnavit.
Hey, it kind of worked in Australia...
Carson
The only solution is that everyone needs to watch more Star Trek: The Next Generation
Ah, if only Picard were here. He'd figure this mess out.
I have a million things to say about this given that I spend a enough time in Jane and Finch and a bit in Rexdale to know that there are lots of people fighting for the health of these communities. It would be nice if people outside of the communities would give more support to them as brothers and sisters rather than thinking of an entire neighborhood as something to be scorned or distanced from.
Nobody wants to hear it but the root problems in the rise in this violence is years of provincial policies that took social programs out of the most vulnerable neighborhoods and changes to the education system that had children being expelled from school as early as kindergarden. Longer jail terms don't prevent crimes from happening giving children hope does. I believe research has shown that every dollar invested in preventative measures (ie. social programs) saves 3 in policing and punishment (not to mention the money lost to the business affected by crime).
We need to rethink some of our approaches.
I just wanted to point out that one factor to the massive drop in murders in NYC in 2001 was the attacks on the WTC. It was widely reported that crime took a massive nosedive immediately after this occurance.
There is some amount of humanity in almost everybody that can be reached IF WE TRY. We are the lucky ones who haven't come to believe that life isn't worth living or that the lives of others are worthless. Let us take a little time to show strangers that someone cares and that living in a particular neighborhood doesn't mean that you have to join a gang.
NatTurner
P.S.: My friends and I used to listen to and love Cypress Hill, NWA, Tim Dog etc. and we never ever would've or have touched weed or guns. We had positive influences, let's all be a positive influence in someone's life, even people who don't live in our own 'hoods. (I live in Mississauga)
AG,
Thanks for making an effort to really think about this. Too often, our reactions to these events are pure emotion. Not the best starting point for sound public policy.
Re your quest for data -- with some analysis too -- the Globe & Mail ran an article comparing Toronto and Boston this weekend. It includes stats on the 2004 murder rates for Toronto and major U.S. cities.
Quote from the article:
Last year, however, the Boston metropolitan area had 61 killings. Though well below the 150 homicides registered in 1990, the figure reflects a steady upward trend. This year, the city has seen 75 homicides, and shootings are up 77 per cent from three years ago. By contrast, Toronto, which has five times the population of Boston, has had 76 homicides so far this year, including 50 involving guns.
This is a case of what I like to call "Statistical Gerrymandering".
Bostonians are much bigger on the demarcation of areas than people in other places. For example, you and I would porbably say that M.I.T. and Harvard are in Boston, but many Bostonians would insist that they are in Cambridge, which is on the other side of the Charles River. Using this distinction and counting only the people in the area formally called "Boston" gives you a population of 500,000. This sort of counting in Toronto terms is like counting the population of Toronto but excluding Etobicoke, Scarborough and North York, which were technically cities of their own prior to amalgamation.
If were instead to look at the populations of Boston's and Toronto's metropolitan areas, they're quite close; Wikipedia reports that Toronto's metro population is 5.6 million and Boston's is 5.8 million.
That's the tricky thing about counting murder rates for cities: where does the "city" actually end?