The head of a union representing Toronto police employees says a five-day spike in shootings and other violent crime points to a lack of police resources in the city.
“This weekend…in the policing community, we were so strapped for police resources,” said Toronto Police Association President Mike McCormack.
On Friday, 28-year-old Joel Alexander was killed in a drive-by shooting in Toronto’s Entertainment District. Tyrone Tulloch, 26, was gunned down in the area of Islington and Steeles Avenues on Tuesday. Later that day, 39-year-old professor and cancer researcher Mark Ernsting was fatally stabbed downtown.
Since Friday, there have been a total of four homicides and more than a dozen shootings in Toronto.
And, McCormack says, police departments are lacking the staff and scheduling protocol to effectively deal with this level of violence, despite the police budget exceeding $1 billion for the first time in 2015.
“Our officers are stressed out,” he said. “They’re bouncing from call to call and we don’t have the resources to deal with this increase in violence that is occurring right now.”
As an example, McCormack said there wasn’t a single available police vehicle to respond to a shooting in the city’s east end on Saturday. “That’s how desperate it’s become.”
Police Chief Mark Saunders has called the crime-heavy week a “blip,” but McCormack says he is nevertheless concerned.
“We’ve seen it as a trend and this trend is continuing,” McCormack said. “We’ve been talking about this for the last three to four months and we’re very concerned about his trend in violence.
Spike in shootings and other violent crime
Police statistics show a dramatic increase in violent crime in the city over the last year, particularly when it comes to the 242 shootings so far in 2015 -- already a 42 per cent increase from last year.
The 151 shootings involving injury or death are up more than 60 per cent from last year. Shootings during which no one was injured are up more than 77 per cent.
Despite these increases, the number of homicides is comparable to this time last year.
Mammoliti calls for military intervention
But the city councillor who represents the area where Tulloch was murdered says it’s going to take more than police to counter the wave of violence.
Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti, who was at the scene of the shooting Tuesday night, is calling for a military response to the violence.
“We have a well-established federal reserve -- an army, perhaps -- that can come in and help the police,” Mammoliti told reporters. “They have more tools than the police department has, to be able to track people down and treat them as the terrorists as they are.”
But McCormack dismissed the idea as unfeasible.
“That’s not a realistic expectation or a realistic response to what’s going on in the City of Toronto right now,” he said.
Carding debate a challenge for officers
McCormack said the ongoing controversy surrounding street checks or “carding” is also making it more difficult for police officers to do their jobs.
“Our officers have no clear direction on how to engage the public ever since we’ve had this regulation being put forward on street checks from the province,” he said. “We believe this a correlation between the lack of engagement without officers and proactive policing.”
The police practice of randomly stopping people on the street has come under fire amid allegations of racial profiling.
Under the 2014 policy, officers are required to issue receipts to individuals who are carded. Police officers are also required to inform the public that they aren't legally obligated to stop and talk.
Under the Police Record Checks Reform Act, passed unanimously by the province earlier this month, ‘carding’ records can no longer be disclosed in police background checks in Ontario.
Tory planning talks on police resources
Meanwhile, Toronto Mayor John Tory says he is planning to meet with all relevant parties to discuss how police resources can be allocated best.
“I am looking forward to sitting down with Mr. McCormack and the Toronto Police Association and discussing the shifts and the requirement for two officers in a car so we can find even more ways to redeploy highly-trained, highly-skilled police officers to things other than directing traffic and so on,” he told CP24. “Right now we do have an issue with the deployment of police officers.”
Tory did not comment on McCormack or Mammoliti’s remarks.
