Radical proposal calls on ex-cons to help reduce city’s gun violence
Posted March 3, 2018 8:47 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Advocates in Toronto are getting ready to propose what some are calling a radical solution to the city’s gun violence, where ex-convicts will be hired and trained to help reduce incidents of gun use.
The radical proposal is called The Interrupters program, and it is already in use elsewhere in Canada and around the world. On Monday, TDSB Trustee Chris Glover will ask the Toronto Board of Health, of which he is also a member, to adopt that program in Toronto.
“This is a program that was developed in Chicago, it hires and trains ex-convicts to go into neighbourhoods to find peaceful resolutions to conflicts,” Glover said. “I want the city of Toronto to take a look at this because what we’ve been doing is not addressing the problem.”
Glover says in the last eight years, he’s been to at least seven funerals of young men in their late teens and early 20’s who have been killed by gun violence.
Part of The Interrupters program is to treat gun violence as a public health epidemic and it asks the city to address the impact it has on the community. Trained ex-convicts would intervene in situations where there’s a threat of violence, and help to de-escalate.
“They know the culture, they know the players and they would try to negotiate a peaceful settlement,” Glover explains. “They also try to work upstream, so when people have conflict your first reaction to resolving it isn’t to resort to violence, and that’s where The Interrupters program can help to reduce this.”
The program has proved to be effective, and Glover says experts from Chicago will be assisting officials in Toronto by providing training and consultations every step of the way.
“This is a program that has proven to work and in neighbourhoods where it’s been used, it has significantly reduced the amount of gun violence and the number of deaths from gun violence.”
The latest Toronto Police data reveals we’ve already had 53 shootings in the city this year.
Annual Shootings in Toronto
Year | Total Shootings | Victims | Fatalities |
2018 | 53 | 71 | 5 |
2017 | 392 | 590 | 39 |
2016 | 407 | 581 | 41 |
2015 | 288 | 429 | 26 |
*Source: Toronto Police
Calls for a more effective response to gun violence have been growing for years. Kelly Whetter’s 18-year-old son Gabriel Nikov was shot to death near Yonge and Bloor in April 2016, and it’s turned her into a relentless anti-gun violence advocate.
“The reason I’m supporting this is because myself, and a bunch of other moms that I’ve met ever since Gabriel was murdered, we find that everything in the report we can resonate with,” she said. “We have a life sentence of anxiety, fear, aggression, anger, PTSD – you name it.”
Whetter, who has organized and participated in several anti-gun rallies in both the GTA and Ottawa, is throwing her support behind Glover’s proposal.
“We shouldn’t be having this problem,” she said. “There isn’t a lot of support even for the young people and for people to understand the ripple effect.”
Zero Gun Violence Movement
Whetter will be sharing her experiences on Monday, along with other advocates, including the founder of the Zero Gun Violence Movement. Louis March has been working in the community for more than 20 years and says gun violence has been getting worse.
“The access to guns, the calibre of guns, the people using the guns are getting younger,” he said. “The brazen nature of the shootings, it’s incredible.”
March says in his experiences, in some communities, getting guns is easier than getting jobs and a program like this will help stakeholders engage people.
“The people who can solve this problem are the people that are in the problem, they’ve done their crime and they’ve done their time,” March explains. “We call them offenders who want to make a difference with their situation so someone else doesn’t have to go through it.”
Mayor John Tory going to Ottawa
Mayor John Tory’s office says he won’t be commenting on the proposal until it’s discussed by the Board of Health on Monday, adding the Mayor believes all levels of government and residents need to work together.
“That’s why he has asked the federal government to crack down on domestic gun trafficking and why he will be going to Ottawa this week for a guns and gangs conference hosted by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale,” a spokesperson from the Mayor’s office said in a statement. “He believes all governments and all residents have to work together to stop violence and keep our communities safe.”
After the Board of Health hears the proposal, city staff will work on creating a follow up report that will include what actions need to be taken to adopt the program in the city of Toronto.