No Toronto neighbourhood is safe: TCHC CEO
Posted February 20, 2013 1:44 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
No one is safe in Toronto in the wake of five recent shootings, four of them fatal, Toronto Community Housing Corp. (TCHC) CEO Gene Jones said.
“There’s no neighbourhood that’s safe,” Jones told CityNews.
“I think Toronto is a great safe community but I can’t guarantee [safety]. The chief [of police] couldn’t guarantee that every neighbourhood is safe,” he said.
Jarvis Montaque, 15, a Grade 10 student at Father Henry Carr high school, was shot dead outside a TCHC building on Jamestown Crescent on Sunday.
Two other 15-year-old boys were also killed on TCHC properties: St. Aubyn Rodney was shot at 40 Turf Grassway, near Jane Street and Finch Avenue West, on Feb. 11.
Tyson Bailey, a high school football star, was fatally shot near the troubled Regent Park neighbourhood on Jan. 18 and left to die in a stairwell.
Two other minors were also shot in the past month, one of whom – a nine-year-old boy – was killed.
Kesean Williams was fatally shot in his Brampton home on Jan. 23.
A 17-year-old was shot near Jane and St. Clair on Saturday. He is expected to survive.
“We try to minimize [risk] and we try to work with residents around the community. The businesses, the schools, everything has to come together in order to have a safe community, because everyone is in this together,” Jones said.
Toronto police chief Bill Blair said there is “very good” work being done in TCHC buildings and police are making progress.
“There is a significant reduction in gun violence this year over last,” Blair said Wednesday.
“Having said that, every time an act of violence takes place, we have to work to restore people’s sense of safety and to assure them that can be done is being done.”
Blair said landlords, schools, police, community centres, families and young people must work together to solve the problem of gun violence.
City council is currently in a two-day meeting on a slew of issues, including a proposal from Coun. Josh Matlow to review youth anti-violence strategies in the wake of the shootings.
