Recent shootings in Mayor David Miller's Toronto

• Apr. 13 - Around 3 a.m. 2 men and 2 women were shot on the dance floor of the Carribean Flavour nightclub in the Kennedy and Ellesmere area of Scarborough. All 4 are in hospital with injuries to their lower bodies and all are expected to recover. Police later arrested 2 men and recovered 2 guns.
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• Apr. 5 - Around 9 p.m., police received reports of shots being fired around Eglinton Avenue and Weston Road. When they arrived they found shell casings, broken glass and some blood but could not find any victims.
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• Apr. 1 - Shortly before 4 p.m., police received a report that shots were fired at a man on Duncanwoods Road in the Finch/Islington area. A 23-year-old and a 17-year-old were arrested and guns and ammunition were recovered. The victim was not injured. Police are seeking 2 more suspects.
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• Apr. 1 - Shortly after 3 a.m., a man was attempting to break up a fight between two others when he was shot in the leg. The incident happened in the parking lot of the Crystal Nightclub located in the Highway 27 and Albion Road area. The victim drove himself to hospita
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Toronto News & Comment

Last Saturday, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) held a demonstration in Rosedale, one of Toronto’s toniest neighborhoods. In a show of solidarity with Ontario’s poor and in an attempt to frighten those more fortunate, the protesters marched through the Rosedale area shouting slogans like "We’re hungry, we’re angry, we won’t go away. Stop the war on the poor; make the rich pay!"

A 12-year-old girl was stabbed and slashed about the head after leaving an "all ages" party around 2:20 a.m. last Saturday morning. The party was held at a club in downtown Toronto’s Entertainment District. The girl was treated for her injuries and released into the custody of people who are referred to as "her parents". Police are searching for another girl who is older, but not much older, than the pre-teen who was attacked.

Whenever I hear David Miller making his periodic sound bites or read an article in which he is interviewed, I get a feeling of dread, not unlike that associated with a loud-mouthed uncle who’s had too much to drink wanting to make a speech at a wedding. I know this sounds unreasonable, but just think of some of the inane things Miller has said and done.

Toronto Police have launched an aggressive campaign to try to curb the poor driving habits that have led to a doubling of traffic fatalities in a short one- year period.

Unless the horse is a police horse, of course.

It has now been over a week since the city of Toronto and the Toronto Police Services held a memorial service for Brigadier. The eight-year-old Belgian cross was struck by a driver who made a U-turn and intentionally barreled into him before fleeing. There was an on-duty police officer riding Brigadier, but his presence seems merely incidental to the events that later took place. The horse was severely injured and had to be put down on the spot.

For the third time in three weeks, Toronto area residents have turned on the news to the sickening, stomach wrenching news that yet again, a parent has come to the decision to end the life or lives of their own offspring. While the psychiatric community spins tales as to how these tragic events unfold, giving us reason after reason why it happens, I have yet to find any real explanation in my own heart apart from selfishness.

If Toronto were a fairytale, Mayor David Miller would be its wicked king.

Night after night, there’s another shoot-up in T.O. Day after day, Miller does nothing about it. (See Shootings in David Miller’s Toronto, canadafreepress.com).

When the calendar turns a page to a new year, you hope that it will be better than the last. I am getting tired of 2006 already, and we are only starting the second month. It’s the political reruns that are depressing.

So, Toronto hotels aren’t doing too well these days. Apparently they are expecting 66% occupancy in 2006, which is up somewhat from the 58% occupancy rate the city’s hotels were reduced to due to the SARS scare. At a recent Toronto Tourism press conference, Greater Toronto Hotel Association president Rod Seiling informed the media that American tourism in Toronto was still down by some 33% and the slight increase in hotel occupancy is due mainly to a 20% increase in European tourists.

For the past two years, Toronto has been cursed by being governed by the 3 M’s — Prime Minister Paul Martin, Premier Dalton McGuinty and Mayor David Miller.

Fiscal responsibility and accountability have never been the strong suits of Mayor David Miller and his left leaning council. Although not entirely responsible for the state of the city of Toronto, Miller has done more than his share to help transform "Toronto the Good "into "the Home of the Homeless" where violent gun crime is escalating almost as fast as taxes are.

Curtis Sliwa, one of the founders of the Guardian Angels was in town last week to attempt to have his group patrol the streets of Toronto. Sliwa’s visit came after some Torontonians wrote to him and asked for help after the horrendous shootings that took place on Yonge Street in the midst of a crowd of Boxing Day shoppers.

The big item in the news last week was Toronto Mayor David Miller’s filing to run for re-election. As he emerged from the clerk’s office after paying his $100 entry fee, Miller held an impromptu press conference during which he claimed that he kept his election promises to Torontonians. He cited his dubious achievement of stopping the construction of a fixed link to the Toronto Island Airport as the largest of his kept promises. What he did not deign to talk about was the whopping tax increases the residents of Toronto were saddled with, while their services drastically declined.

It didn’t take long after the Boxing Day shootings for charges of racism to be levelled. The Coalition of African Canadian Organizations charged that it was only when a pretty, white middle class teenager was shot to death that the powers that be decided to take serious steps to curb the gun violence that has become a frequent occurrence on Toronto streets. The group charges that had Jane Creba been black, there would not have been the action that there is now.

England plans to take action in an attempt to control the anti-social behaviour of young children before they have any run-ins with the law. The Blair government has proposed compelling parents of at risk youth to attend parenting classes. Parents who refuse to do so after being ordered face fines and the risk of imprisonment.

The headline of the December 27^th edition of the Toronto Sun screamed "Bloodbath". Anyone who casually glanced at a Toronto Sun newspaper box while on their way to work or to Boxing Day sales couldn’t help but see it. For those who saw the headline but were not aware of the events of the previous day would have naturally assumed that a violent event had taken place in Fallujah or Khandahar or perhaps Chicago. But the bloodbath that occurred happened on the streets of a city that was once referred to as "Toronto the Good". Late on the afternoon of the 26^th, two rival gangs had a shootout on Yonge Street just north of the Eaton Centre where the streets were filled with Boxing Day shoppers. When the shooting ended, a 15-year-girl lay dead and 6 others were wounded; one of them critically.

Last week the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network released a report calling for the decriminalization of prostitution. What is suspect is not the predictable calling for decriminalization of the world’s oldest profession but the timing of the report’s release.

A recently released report suggested making changes to the way that Toronto City Hall operates.

The short answer is, not in the foreseeable future.

Last Friday a gun crime shocked the residents of the city of Toronto who, since the beginning of the summer have been getting a near daily dose of news of shootings along with their morning cup of coffee. Eighteen-year-old Amon Beckles was attending the funeral of his friend, 17-year-old Jamal Hemmings. Beckles had been with his friend 10 days before when Hemmings was gunned down on the streets of what was once referred to as "Toronto the Good". At one point in the service, Beckles went outside to have a cigarette and he was re-entering the Seventh Day Adventist Church, he himself was gunned down and killed within earshot of the mourners.

According to the Toronto Star, a confidential report entitled, "Building a 21^st Century City" will be released this week. Drafted by Queen’s Park and Toronto City Hall, the report proposes, among other things, to give the city of Toronto greater powers of taxation. If the recommendations become law, the Star says that Torontonians will face municipal taxes on such things as tobacco, bar drinks and entertainment tickets.

The Toronto Police Association (TPA) seems to have a lot more in common with the Conservative Party of Canada than just similar views on law and order issues. Since the work-to-rule campaign began last month, TPA president Dave Wilson is looking more and more like Stephen Harper, leader of the Federal Conservatives. And if Wilson wants to come out on top in the association’s negotiations with the Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB), this is not a good thing.

In the early hours of November 1, a young Scarborough man answered his door. He was shot in the face and became the 45^th person in the city of Toronto to be killed by a gun this year. More people have now died from gunshot wounds in Toronto the Good during 2005 than died from the outbreak of SARS three years ago. Unlike the SARS outbreak, the silence that is coming from all levels of government, especially the local level is deafening.

October 24, 2005 was one of the bloodiest and most violent days that Toronto has ever seen. There were five separate shooting incidents, including a shootout just outside the Sherbourne subway station where a bullet entered the door of a passing van and narrowly missed the driver. In the 48-hour period that ended on October 24, three men were killed and two more are in hospital with life-threatening critical injuries. At the time of this writing, the death toll from guns in 2005 stands at 44--the same number as those who died from SARS three years ago.

Last Saturday night 41-year-old Jason Pereira was shot in the face while operating his TTC bus on Morningside Avenue in Scarborough. A group of young men were running from a second group and Pereira let them board his bus. While the doors were open, someone from the second group fired shots into the bus, striking the driver who was sitting behind the wheel. Pereira is in stable condition in hospital and has lost the sight in his left eye.

Toronto started a program to pay up to $500 for tips that lead to a seizure of an illegal gun. Toronto has been plagued by gun violence this summer with 41 of the city’s 61 murders recorded so far this year having been committed by use of a firearm.

Next month marks the second anniversary of the election of David Miller and the current Toronto City Council. Next January the campaign for the 2006 municipal elections will get underway in earnest.

Jack Layton wants the Toronto riding of Beaches-East York to return to its orange roots: New Democratic Party orange that is. For years, the riding has swung to the left, despite being on the right side of Yonge Street.

"The problems faced by black students in Toronto's school system are well known: higher dropout rates, lower average marks, higher rates of suspension and dismissal, and so on. Are special black-only or "black-focused" schools the answer to these problems? Certainly not. The last thing Toronto should do is to foster the sense of apartness that exists among some black youth."

Last week, Justice Denise Bellamy released her reports on the Toronto Computer Leasing Inquiry and the Toronto External Contracts Inquiry. While the tone and the explicitness of a few of her findings might have surprised some, it is doubtful that the end results did. Bellamy found that a councillor had accepted a $25,000 payoff, that a senior bureaucrat had openly advertised that he could be bought and that contracts were entered into on the basis of personal and sexual relationships. In other words, there was corruption at Toronto City Hall.

Ever since the recent outbreak of gun violence in Toronto, the Toronto Police Force, the City of Toronto and the provincial government have started to get tough. Unfortunately, while the gangbangers are shooting it out almost unimpeded, the police and politicos have decided to get tough with the law abiding citizens of Toronto.

The mantra of the left, including Mayor David Miller, Police Chief Bill Blair and Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, is that poverty is responsible for the rash of gun deaths and shootings that have recently been on the rise in what used to be referred to as Toronto the Good. Even when they are forced to concede that more enforcement and tougher penalties are needed, they always return to the issue of poverty. If only there were more basketball courts, the would-be gangbangers would be shooting hoops instead of shooting guns. If only there were more community centres, pre-teens would be making macramé at 3 in the morning instead of selling drugs to earn enough money to by a semi-automatic. Even Ontario PC leader John Tory, who started off being critical of the extra police officers that Dalton McGuinty has never put on the street, has now jumped on the "we need more community resources" bandwagon.

On Monday the Toronto Police Service issued a news release outlining recent arrests involving possession of guns. Between August 18 and the 20th, Toronto police arrested 10 men, laid 69 charges and seized 6 illegal guns in various locations around the city. Since Monday, more guns have been confiscated and more charges laid including the seizure of a sawed-off shotgun found in a home where a 7-month-old baby and a 12-year-old boy were present.

First it was all the fault of those damn Americans with their lax gun laws. If only the Americans passed gun control legislation similar to ours, then Toronto wouldn’t be enjoying a bumper crop of gun crimes. Any fool can see that those guns killing all those young men are American. That’s very likely why Toronto Mayor David Miller is so clear in identifying some of the root causes of this crime wave.

He is the black Toronto city councillor, who has the guts to suggest the problem of gun violence amongst black youth requires reconsidering racial profiling by the police. Naturally, the socialist city councillors, like Pam McConnell, the socialist media, and the socialist-pleasing police brass, were all over this guy like flies on doo-doo. How could he suggest that young black people should be stopped and questioned at random when we know that 92% of them are innocent?

By John Lawrence
Thursday, August 18, 2005

Toronto councillor Michael Thompson has done something other Toronto councillors have refused to do in decades. He has used his brain. Yes, this previously unknown member of the city's council has stepped up and used some common sense. No doubt this has raised a lot of hackles, as common sense hasn't been seen in this arena for many councils now.

Toronto mayor David Miller has done an apparent about face on the issue of violent gun crime which at least appears to have reached epidemic proportions in recent weeks. The mayor cut short his family vacation in Maine to return to the city in an attempt to deal with the issues of guns and crime.

While the city is being plagued by gun violence, Toronto Councillor, Giorgio Mammoliti is proposing a bylaw that will impose an 11 o’clock curfew on those less than 15 years of age. According to the Ward 7 councillor, enforcing the curfew by fining parents whose children are out at night unsupervised will put the responsibility for children back where it belongs — with the parents.

Toronto-- Perhaps canadafreepress.com columnist Edward Zawadzki was right when he said that Air France Flight 358, which skidded off a runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport yesterday, sounded like "an implosion" that "reverberated" when it burst into spectacular flames.

Toronto-- Canada Free Press columnist Edward Zawadzki, who lives within blocks of Toronto Pearson International Airport, and was writing his column when Air France Flight 358 skidded off a runway near the 401 highway, says he heard a sound “like an implosion”.

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