Our summer of murder

Curiously enough the mayoral solution to this problem was covering the most recent Toronto shooting in her capacity as an investigative journalist.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crjcoin ... ploademail

Can you tell us what she has to say about it?
or is her picture worth a thousand words?

This is less about guns than it is a lawlessness problem. Police have been de-policing for years now, with no end in sight. The days of constant police patrols (crusiers or foot) are long over. Add to the fact that the current Mayor of Toronto and it's police chief are both wimps on an epic scale, and police funding never seems to be increased properly, and voila.

Twenty years ago you would always see a police cruiser or two throughout the course of the day, as well as some foot patrol officers in the community, or in tourist/shopping areas, and most of them quite pleasant. Fast forward to now, when you hardly ever see police (unless they're sitting in their cars at a construction site), nor do you hardly ever see a cop on foot patrol.

Even here in Barrie, there were always officers walking the beat downtown (because of the bars and other things), whereas lately all you see is maybe a cruiser patrolling if your lucky, as well as a police drone occasionally flying past.

It's too easy to always blame guns when our own legal system as a whole (police, courts, government) is the biggest contributor to most of the crime we keep seeing.

Add to the fact that we have a wuss as a PM doesn't help either. No one wants to get down and dirty to tackle crime anymore, not even the lawmakers themselves.

To borrow an quote, "Where's the beef?"

-J.

Can you tell us what she has to say about it?
or is her picture worth a thousand words?

Well the answer to your second inquiry is 'Yeah, pretty much... , but what she said was mostly critique of the current administration - Tavis (whatever that is), the cancellation of carding as a crime prevention measure, the decrease of police, the jello spine of current mayor John Tory. That sort of thing.

Oh...and also, she was pretty worked up about the Yorkdale shooting. She had just talked to two kids who had been scared out of a movie theatre during the show by the shooting.

She didn't like that. Her voice quavered. She claimed that sort of thing didn't happen and would never have been tolerated at one time.

It sounds like the volume can stay muted. Rots of ruck on election day!

A big part of the problem is we've let policing salaries get out of hand. I respect the job police do, but do we really need to pay our cops more than anyone else in the world? Because if a cop's salary is $100,000 (not counting overtime and benefits) it's hard to afford a lot of them. They don't make this much in the US, UK or France.

Canada has 185 cops per 100k population. The US has 284.
That's one hell of a difference. Now some of you might be tempted to say "well, the US is a crazy place with lots of guns and violent crime so they need that many"

Well... Austria has 314, Belgium 412. Australia is only 202 (still more than us) but Germany has 296 and France 340, England 302, Scotland 324.

That number for Canada again - 185.