Summer safety initiative curbed crime: chief Blair
Posted September 14, 2012 12:55 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Crime was markedly down in Toronto this summer since police ramped up investigations and put hundreds more officers on the streets, chief Bill Blair says.
Blair launched his summer safety initiative in the wake of two mass public shootings — in the Eaton Centre food court and at a community barbecue on Danzig Street in Scarborough.
In the seven weeks from July 26 to Sept. 9, Blair sent the equivalent of 329 more officers into the city’s most vulnerable areas.
“When we announced this initiative we talked about saving lives,” Blair said at news conference on Friday. “We talked about making an investment in community safety. Today we are presenting to you the return on that investment.”
During the initiative, crime was down across the board compared to the average since 2005 — the year of the so-called Summer of the Gun.
“It is needed, for officers to be out here, almost 24/7, almost every day, to check up and see what’s going on. It is necessary,” one Danzig resident said.
Here are the results:
Total homicides: -62.2 per cent. (Shooting homicides: -68.7 per cent)
Sexual assaults: -12.8 per cent
Assaults: -24.4 per cent
Robbery: -17.2 per cent
Break-and-enter: -27.5 per cent
Auto theft: -53.6 per cent
Theft over: -35.7 per cent
Total offences: -28.7 per cent
Blair also pointed out that murders were down 78.9 per cent compared to the summer of 2005 and shooting deaths were down 86.7 per cent.
“I think that we have demonstrated throughout this initiative that we can make a difference. That working together — uniformed officers and the people who live in some of our most vulnerable neighbourhoods — we can achieve significant reduction in violence and, perhaps most importantly, significant reductions in fear in our communities,” he said.
“The evidence before us reaffirms for me … that cops count.”
On June 2, Ahmed Hassan, 24, and Nixon Nirmalendran, 22, were killed and five others were wounded when shots were fired inside the Eaton Centre food court.
And on July 16, Shyanne Charles, 14, and Joshua Yasay, 23, died when they were caught in the crossfire of a gunfight at a barbecue on Danzig. Twenty-three other people, including a toddler, were wounded in what Blair called the worst mass shooting in Toronto’s history.
