The president of the Toronto Police Association is renewing a call to hire more officers after 17 people were shot over the long weekend.
Speaking with CTV News Toronto a day after Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders addressed a string of gun violence that occurred since Saturday, Mike McCormack said that a “lack of commitment in policing” is causing frustration
“We’ve been having this discussion for a number of years,” he said. “When we talk about investing in policing and getting people out into the neighbourhoods all these very resource oriented programs … we need to have the personnel to do that and this has been a frustrating narrative for my members who are out there trying to keep the public safe.”
McCormack also said that he has notified the Ministry of Labour of what he describes as understaffing at the police service, which he says constitutes a workplace safety issue. He said that the service has about 900 fewer officers than it did in 2010.
“We are meeting with and have been meeting with the Ministry of Labour over the last couple of months because our officers have raised this as an officer safety and a public safety concern,” McCormack said.
Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders speaks to reporters on Aug. 5, 2019. (CTV News Toronto)
On Monday, Saunders said that there were 11 separate shooting incidents over the long weekend, with about a third of the occurrences taking place in the northwest end of the city. A few hours after his press conference, four more people were shot in the city in three different incidents.
“This is not a blip,” McCormack said. “It is not a spike. This is the new normal in Toronto.”
“What we need to see is a concrete plan, a commitment to resources, and something that will have an impact on this gun violence. It is unacceptable right across the board.”
Toronto police say that 17 people were shot in the city over the long weekend. (CTV News Toronto)
In response to McCormack’s call to hire more police officers, Saunders said that the force is doing just that, hiring about 300 more officers and 95 special constables.
Saunders said that he would like to see an increase in police officers patrolling the streets, but said that is a redeployment issue rather than a hiring matter.
“These are folks that I have that can work anywhere across the city. We look at the city as a whole and not as 17 different compartments the way (McCormack) looks at it, and we say ‘where are the big issues right now, where do we have to go’, Saunders said.
Toronto police officers attend the scene of a shooting in Liberty Village on Aug. 4, 2019. (CTV News Toronto)
The weekend shootings took place during a busy weekend in the city, which hosted the Toronto Caribbean Carnival. Saunders said that it he doesn’t think this is a “normal weekend” in Toronto due to the high density of people in the downtown core.
“Let’s not treat this weekend like it’s every other weekend,” Saunders said. “It was a much higher number of volumes of activity, people and events that are in the city.”
“We had it resourced fairly well.”
At the same time, Saunders said that Toronto does have a “gun violence problem,” but maintains that the city is one of the safest cities in the world.
“This is an urban city … there will be guns that will be out there and there will be people who are using guns, predominantly people who use those guns are people who belong to street gangs.”
The last fatal shooting occurred on Thursday
Just before the long weekend, a 16-year-old boy was found with multiple gunshot wounds in the stairwell of a North York apartment building. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Frances Nunziata, the councilor for York South-Weston, said that she is “sick of the gun violence” in the city. She is hosting a community meeting in her ward Tuesday night at the Falstaff Community Centre that will focus on safety and security.
“That 16-year-old shot in the stairway, he was just a child. And it’s just sickens me when I hear about the number of guns we have on the streets,” Nunziata said.
Police investigate after a 16-year-old was shot dead in North York. (CTV News Toronto)
Nunziata also renewed a call made by Toronto Mayor John Tory on Monday afternoon for a handgun ban in the city.
“There are more guns on the street now than there ever was. We need to take an aggressive approach.”
Speaking to CP24 on Tuesday, Tory said that the recent gun violence makes him "angry" and “frustrated.”
“I know we are hiring more police officers. We gave a substantial increase to the police budget,” the mayor said. “I have been repeatedly calling for tougher gun laws, tougher sentencing laws, tougher bail laws. And we are investing a lot in kids and families together with the federal government and others.”
“I think we owe it to people who live in what otherwise is a safe city to do whatever we can.”
According to the most recent budget request, the Toronto Police Service will have an average of 4,730 officers in 2019. In 2010, about 5,600 police officers were sworn in.
