Police Chief Mark Saunders says that Toronto remains the “safest urban city in North America” despite a string of shootings over the Canada Day long weekend that left three people dead and two others fighting for their lives in hospital.
The wave of violence began late on Thursday night when 17-year-old Jaydin Simpson was gunned down outside a Danzig Street townhouse complex, just hours after graduating from high school.
It then continued over the long weekend.
In the early hours of Saturday morning three people were shot at an apartment building in the city’s Mount Dennis neighbourhood, including one victim who was in a wheelchair.
Two of the shooting victims, 25-year-old Christopher Teape and 32-year-old Ahmed Mohamud, were killed while the third showed up in hospital on his own with apparent gunshot wounds.
Less than 24 hours later another fatal shooting occurred at a nightclub in the Entertainment District.
The victim, 33-year-old Jordan Armstrong, was found by staff after last call with at least one gunshot wound. He was rushed to hospital but died sometime overnight.
It remains unclear when the shooting actually took place as police have said that the noise inside the crowded club could have muffled the sound of gunshots.
On Canada Day, there were two more shootings that took place within a few hours – one in the Leslie Street and Van Horne Avenue area and another near Falstaff Avenue and Jane Street.
The victims in those shootings, both men, were rushed to hospital in critical condition.
So far no arrests have been made in connection with any of the shootings.
Speaking with reporters at the launch of a Youth in Policing Initiative on Tuesday morning, Saunders said that while “anyone being shot is a concern for the Toronto Police Service,” the cluster of occurrences over the long weekend isn’t on its own a reason for worry.
“Usually in the summers there is more gunplay and we know that. We a have a lot of resources out in the right places and sometimes we have to reconfigure our resources; not just our people on the street but the specialized people as well,” he said.
‘Arresting our way out of this is not the solution’
Saunders said that while not all of the shootings over the long weekend were gang-related, there is information suggesting that a number of them were.
He said that the violence should serve as a reminder of the need for a “holistic approach” to combating violent crime.
“This is not about solving murder cases, this is about preventing murder cases from happening and also looking at the people who get incarcerated and come back out – 90 per cent of them are coming back out,” he said. “Some people think this is a police issue and say ‘here go solve this.’ Look we are making those arrests but that is not the solution. It has to be a holistic approach if we are going to get it right. Arresting our way out of this is not the solution,”
Saunders said that police do deploy their resources differently over long weekends when there is sometimes an increase in violent crime, though he said that it would be inappropriate for him to speak in more detail about that.
He also pointed out that Toronto continues to enjoy a relatively low homicide rate compared to similarly sized North American cities.
There have been a total of 32 homicides in Toronto so far in 2019, compared to 44 at this point last year. There ended up being a record 96 homicides in 2018.
“If we could spin this the proper way and really look at the numbers for an urban city of 2.8 million people if you compare it to other urban cities you will see this is the safest urban city in North America,” Saunders said.
Saunders’ comments come one day after Mayor John Tory told reporters that he had spoken with the police chief regarding the uptick in shootings.
“I can just say that the police are working very hard on these,” he said at a Canada Day Event, prior to the two most recent shootings. “They have had some help with people coming forward with information, he tells me, but we need more. We need more information and we need video that people might have.”
