LILLEY: Gun crime in Toronto may be down, but shooters getting bolder
· Toronto Sun
From a street festival to the U.S. Consulate , recent shootings show a level of brazenness that statistics alone can’t explain.
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On most days of the year, there is a shooting in Toronto. On some weekends, it seems to hit harder because the shootings are so public.
Two weeks ago, it was the shooting at the Salsa on St. Clair street festival, combined with the shooting at Rebel nightclub .
On Friday, we started the day with a woman shot and killed in Etobicoke . In the middle of the afternoon, a man pulled a gun and fired shots in Scarborough.
Then we had the window of Kiva’s Bakery smashed at Steeles Ave. W. and Bathurst St. with police saying they believe the same suspects later fired shots at Kiva’s Bagel Bar at Yonge St. and St. Clair Ave. an hour later, just after midnight.
And, of course, we started the week off with a bang after someone fired shots at the U.S. Consulate near University Ave. and Queen St. just before 5 a.m. on Monday.
A dangerous new level of brazenness
But don’t worry, the statisticians will tell us gun crime is down.
They are right. Gun crime is down in Ontario. The problem is that the people carrying out the gun crime are far more brazen about it. The shooting at the U.S. Consulate happened with an officer parked in a marked vehicle outside the building.
“You would expect a highly visible police cruiser stationed right in front of the consulate would act as a deterrent. It perhaps speaks to the brazen quality of this act, the recklessness that’s involved,” said Deputy Chief Frank Barredo.
A high-speed chase ensued and was only called off after police deemed it to be a danger to the public, as speeds topped 140 km/h on the Don Valley Parkway. If only the criminals carrying out these shootings cared as much about public safety.
Whether in Scarborough in the middle of the afternoon, at Yonge and St. Clair just after midnight or at the U.S. Consulate just before 5 a.m., these are all places where innocent bystanders could be hit.
The same could be said of the shootings at Salsa on St. Clair and Rebel nightclub.
A city that didn’t used to be this way
Hank Idsinga retired as an inspector with Toronto Police in 2024 after 34 years on the job. He said that with this many shootings, it’s hard to call the city safe anymore and points out that it wasn’t always this way.
“I remember I was working in 14 Division and we got a call about a guy with a gun. Police officers from Scarborough drove down to see it. They had never seen one on the street,” he told me in a recent episode of the Full Comment Podcast .
“Fast-forward now to where the Toronto Police are literally seizing about a dozen guns, crime guns, every single week.”
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The case for tougher consequences
For Idsinga, the solution is simple: Make the risk of carrying a gun higher than the reward of using one.
“We have to make the repercussions for possession of firearms so severe that people simply don’t want to carry firearms. They don’t want to risk that charge. They don’t want to go to jail,” he said.
That isn’t where our political leadership is, either at the municipal level or the federal level. Perhaps that’s where Premier Doug Ford is, but he has little sway here.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals are hardly tough on crime and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow sets the tone for the Toronto Police Service Board and, therefore, the police service. Under her leadership, Toronto has seen some of the worst spikes in crime in the city’s history, including shootings.
It doesn’t have to be this way.