Spadina private security the shame of Toronto's Tall Perfect Mayor
News Item: Spadina Merchants hire Intelligarde
If you drive on certain Toronto streets during daylight hours this year, you are bound to see Metro’s Finest, keenly serving their masters’ need for incremental speeding ticket revenue. When you run a budget deficit, every new dollar that doesn’t require a tax increase is the best kind.
Pick Mount Pleasant, Pottery Road or Moore Avenue, for example, and our crafty Men/Women in Black will be hiding behind poles, fences or stationed in bus shelters, laser speed gun at the ready. Gone are the days when a bright yellow Dodge police car sits at the side of the road with an X-Band radar gun affixed to a metal arm stuck out the patrol car window. We are now in a world of the Laser Ambush.
The “scourge” of speeding has been permanently reduced in these areas, at least among the regulars. But enough cars amble along at 17 or 18km/h over the limit to keep the Officers’ ticket books busy. Job well done. Even if our Court system overflows with motorists testing the limits of the Askov decision.
And while Torontonians will be relieved that the speeders are being frog marched off to court, there is a brewing concern that many other basic policing duties are being ignored. In 2007, for example, members of one Ratepayers Association complained to a very senior officer at 53 Division about a series of events that happened in a short period of time, all concentrated in a 4 block area of downtown:
1. A man gained access to a home using fake Enbridge I.D. during daylight hours. After a few minutes of this fellow walking around the main floor without any particular purpose, the owner got suspicious and called Enbridge; individual fled on foot.
2. Three attempted and one successful late night B&Es within a block of each other. One of which was an attempted forced entry through a patio door as a 9 month pregnant woman was on the other side, getting a drink of water at 2 a.m. in her kitchen (on the same street as #1 above). Another involved a man with a flashlight who was discovered sneaking around the main floor of a family home. A third was scared away when the home alarm was triggered at 5 a.m.
3. Drive-by pellet gun shooting to the head.
4. The same vehicle that was used in #3 was used in a random baseball bat attack on a doctor out for a late night walk; one block from incidents #1 and #2.
5. Several other homes were broken into between midnight and 6 a.m. and the keys were stolen for SUVs and luxury cars. Vehicles being targeted were BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Jag, Acura and Lexus.
The response from Metro Police was troubling, if not frightening. According to police records, most of these crimes never happened. At least we know why Mayor David Miller says the crime stats are dropping in Toronto. Metro Police aren’t tracking them all.
In the case of #1, the senior police boss said the resident was wrong, and that the individual really was an Enbridge employee. The complainant, who happens to be a Judge, disagreed and wondered why the “employee” fled on foot when a call was placed to Enbridge to verify his employment.
In situation #2, police had no record of one of the four events, and had mismarked another. There was no record of the pregnant woman’s call, even though seven police cars responded to the 2 a.m. 911 call. How is it possible that seven police cars, including a K-9 unit, could be dispatched anywhere to investigate a crime without a record of the attempted crime being kept? A second event was recorded by the rookie constable as an “unlocked” door, as there was no sign of forced entry as far as he was concerned; which meant it wouldn’t be recorded as an attempted crime. His superior eventually rewrote the report as an “attempted B&E”. Another 20-year plus officer allowed that he’d “never heard of the street before” the complaint.
In cases #3 and #4, the senior police officer hadn’t heard of either event, even though police and ambulances were involved in the treatment of both cases, and they’d happened on the same city street. How could this not come up in the morning Platoon briefing?
In case #5, Metro Police put out a Community Crime prevention bulletin, suggesting that residents take steps themselves to deal with the car theft problem. Suggestions included: placing a cellular telephone in your bedroom in event that your telephone lines are tampered with, leaving a ground floor light and radio on during the night, leaving the lights on outside, etc.
But, increased patrols and police visibility? Never happened.
Some neighbours in the areas of these very crimes will tell you that they haven’t seen a single patrol car, bicycle or foot patrol officer on their street in the 12 months that followed these events. Unless, of course, the City has hired a private contractor to repave the very street where incidents #3 and #4 took place. Then you’ll get two or three Officers on hand for an entire day to deal with traffic management. Must be a different budget at City Hall.
In response to some of the events above, and the lack of action from Metro Police or the Mayor, private security firms are seeing a brisk business as residents take matters into their own hands. For $30,000 a year, a private security guard will come to your home each hour between dusk and dawn. Night after night. One company boasts at least three new clients as a result of the events above. Other taxpayers have installed exterior camera systems; which is bad news for their neighbours, or course, as would-be thieves will just go to the next home down the block.
With this anecdotal backdrop, it can come as no surprise that other Toronto neighbourhoods are also fed up, and hiring their own private pseudo police forces to do what isn’t being done by the thousands of police employed by the City of Toronto.
Just like in Brazil.
While the Tall Perfect Mayor of Toronto fumes daily about the Island Airport, he’s blind and mute when it comes to the apparent collapse of the confidence that Torontonians once had in the ability of their police force to deal with the bread and butter of their job. Frustrated with the lack of basic police presence where it counts, the role is being contracted out to the private sector.
Shame.
Where’s the Mayor and the Toronto Police Services Board? According to the President of the Toronto Police Association, they’re “missing in action”.
Amen to that.
For every would-be candidate for the next Toronto Mayoral race, here’s your issue. Handed to you on a silver platter by the sitting Mayor himself. It’s the shame of Toronto.
MRM
This is a scandal but then David Miller, an English immigrant, has taken a page from the British Home Office. That is, if you don’t like the results lie about them. We know that Mayor Miller is the master of exaggeration, the bard of fear mongers and the prince of propaganda. Yes, I am referring to the handgun ban red herring. He is simply being consistent by putting his political agenda forward by any means possible. Facts be damned! He is not going to change. The only relief is to vote him out of office.
A very insightful article on the disappearing local beat copper from Toronto’s streets. The same thing is happening in the UK. I emigrated from Scotland in 1994 and became very frustrated at the politically correct hiring practices of the Toronto Metro force. Being a white, heterosexual redhaired Scot doesn’t count any more. Rather than hire people who are capable of doing the job, they wasted millions on being politically correct. But, that’s another story. When socialist airheads like Miller waste their time on handgun bans, building more basket ball courts (to cut gang crime, presumably), and ensure that city cops are turning speeding motorists into national pariahs, break-ins, theft, muggings, drive-by shootings and other criminal activities are getting worse. Why not use private security companies to patrol neighbourhoods? If they are trained to a reasonably good level of professionalism and properly supervised (many are), then it is inevitable that more communities are turning to private policing to fill the gap that has been left by local politicians and bureaucrats who have decided to “prioritize” police duties elsewhere. It is a shame and should not happen in any town or city in Canada.
But, I admit to having a biased opinion. As the owner of a security company in Calgary, Alberta, we are seeing a similar situation evolve here. When cops are busy with “other” duties, private security companies are taking over tasks that used to be the domain of the traditional beat Bobby (if I can use that term). The difference is, I hire coppers from the Philipinnes, South Africa and the UK to come here for two years on a work contract, thus ensuring that the security guards who work for me are trained, mature law enforcement professionals already. And they go through a Canadian orientation training program before bering put to work, under a Canadian supervisor to boot.
The BIG problem here is, Communities become alienated when the beat copper vanishes and is replaced by a squad car that ‘might’ be directed to answer your call for help – if your call is deemed to be a “priority” crime, that is.
Britain has found that coppers in cars do not deter crime, and the return of the traditional beat Bobby is now a priority in itself. Many Brits living here remember a police show called ‘Dixon of Dock Green’, about a London copper who patrolled his beat, knew everybody in the neighbourhood, kept the peace and was a trusted, reassuring presence. If crime is to be deterred, then Toronto must get back to the sort of traditional policing that most of us over 45 remember. There is simply no substitute for a local neighbourhood beat copper who is a trusted, familiar figure that can be relied upon to help during most situations.
But will Toronto, or even Calgary heed the desire of its residents for a return of the beat copper? Only time will tell.
Anecdotal evidence is of limited use, but I see cops walking/cycling the beat with regularity in my neighborhood which is beside the city’s largest broken housing project (Regent Park). The amount of crime in our pocket is minimal, even lower than I would have expected before living here.