Bag 'em and Tag 'em Dano

In spite of what the Chief of Police says about bang-bang in the city, Toronto's denizens have to be getting used to the nightly fusillades in various parts of town. The other night at one of the swank downtown hotels, last night out in the west end. They seem to be everywhere - the pistol-packers. Not just packers, target shooters too.

One questioned citizen succinctly pointed out that TO is safer than many other cities. How nice!

The point is that, although Toronto has had its share of problems, there SEEMS TO BE AN EPIDEMIC OF SHOOTING going on. Toronto the good mght have strangulations, stabbings, beatings and other methods of inflicting extreme prejudice on somebody else, but gun deaths were fairly infrequent and mostly at the hands of police. But the 'glock is in the other holster' now and the hands-on approach to murder has taken a back seat to the safer 'reach out and touch someone' approach.

So what do you do about it? The police have tried gang raids - the last about a month ago - obviously there are still gangs and guns and shooters on the street soooo.... more raids? Maybe, maybe not ( bad PR). They've also tried a diversion program - hiring "at risk", youth for paid summer jobs. That should give them cash for clothes and bling-bling and good times without them thinking they have to steal, a positive move. What minority group will arm themselves next?

Why don't the pols just admit that 95 percent of this shooting involves young black men, particularly young black men from the Caribbean with a funny attitude toward what 'men' are supposed to be about. Why don't they make the community, or at least the family, responsible if young 'Deshawen' makes a few babies or gets nabbed with a pistol or some belongings that aren't his. Instead of treating the demise of some youngster over a bad drug deal as a lottery win for his grieving family, find out if they condoned or ignored the things he did. If they did, cut them off their other benefits. Make them work, or go back down south.

Asking for cooperation, and having the little kids promise not to play with guns is nice, but it isn't going to work. This has to be stopped before Toronto gets as bad as other places, and it will.