james t kirk

No need to post the link, I am sure that most everyone has read about this latest insanity.

A 15 year old girl doing some shopping on Yonge Street yesterday was fatally wounded. 7 others, 2 critically also wounded by a bunch of cowards who decided to start shooting at each other on Yonge Street with no regard for humans caught in their cross fire.

It's gone too far. I believe we are at 78 murders this year.

David Miller and Paul Martin have their heads stuck up their asses as usual. Miller issued some pathetic statement that sounded like a form letter. Miller runs around talking about getting to the "root causes" of the violence, yet it only gets worse. He (Miller) doesn't have the guts, or the vision to take the problem on head on, instead, he blames the Americans for making and selling hand guns. What a joke he is. Martin talks about banning handguns. (I am sure that if there was a ban, these punks would have been lining up to turn in their guns.)

One of the punks arrested at Castlefrank is under 18, so we all know that he will be getting a pass on this. The other one will go away for a few years before he's out on day parole.

I know I am sounding like an old coot, but there is simply no fear of the Canadian justice system, and rightfully so. The Young Offenders Act is the worst piece of crap legislation that this country has ever passed. I am all for giving some kid who pulls a B and E at 16 and gets caught the benefit of the doubt, but not murder. Especially one as cold and callous as this one was.

It's out of control.

These guys (if guilty) should both go away for LIFE. And life means just that. Till the day they die, they can sit in prison.

Leto

I am so FUCKING pissed off with this. I feel powerless to make a change. i want to turn into Charles Bronson, and hunt down these pathetic animals. What can be done to make real change happen, starting tomorrow morning?

I'm not sure, but if I was the parent of the slain girl, I would be going underground now to hunt these fuckheads down.

I'm clearly speaking from anger. I got to think about this.

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highthief

I wish people would stop blaming politicians for this, as if some it is their fault.

The fault lies with the same communities it has lain with the past several years. It is time for some groups to come to grips with the fact their progeny are out of control and do something about it.

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Charlatan

Very good point highthief.

The silence from the black communtiy on many of the black on black killings over the past couple of years has been deafening. There are witnesses that are simply not coming forward.

Yes there are root causes. Paying attention to them *is* important. You can't just increase the policing without adressing the issues that bring about crime in the first place. Miller may be a bit too far in the root cause direction with his platitudes but he has greatly increase police spending over the past year.

As for Martin's handgun ban... what a joke. It is useless legislation without harsher punishments for those who would use guns during crime. Yes, guns are flooding across the border and they will continue to do so regardless of a ban or a registry.

For those who don't know, the Bloods and the Crips are very active here. They are taking over all the local gangs and splitting up the territories. They are agressive and well financed.

The fucking idiots who did this should be subjected to the harshest of punishments. The kind of behaviour is not acceptable... period.

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james t kirk

I agree with your second point, however, with regard to your first point, it is the politicians who make the laws and I see the current justice system as a complete joke. Especially the young offenders act.

Here's what David Miller had to say about it today,

"Guns come from two places, about half of them come from the United States and about half are stolen from legal gun owners in and around Toronto which is why I support a ban on handgun ownership," Miller said."

He is in total denial mode as usual. Blaming the USA and looking to a hand gun ban to solve his problems. He is without direction or guts on this issue and is failing as a mayor in what is proving to be the most crucial issue of his tenure as mayor.

I never had any particualar love for Fantino because I thought he let the corruption at the police dept. get completely out of hand, never the less on this issue, I agree with him 100%.

This is what he had to say,

"Certainly we have to look at all of these socio-economic issues and considerations but at the end of the day, we're still dealing with a hard-core (group) of young people who are pre-disposed to violence, afraid of nothing and accountable to no one."

http://sympaticomsn.ctv.ca/servlet/A..._update_051228

I don't know why the politicians don't have the balls to bring in legislation to repeal the young offenders act as it pertains to violent crime, and enact laws that say if you commit a crime with a gun, you get an automatic life sentence. Get caught with a hand gun in public, you get an automatic 10 year sentence.

We have tried the "we understand your socio-economic hardship made you do it" followed by a big I understand hug route in the legal system. It obviously isn't working.

james t kirk

I am all for paying attention to the "root causes" of unacceptable behavior, however, I don't think it will do much good in turning those who have already fallen into crime as a lifestyle. (I do believe it can do good in PREVENTING a kid from choosing crime as a way of life, but I don't believe that it can change someone who is already there. You might turn the odd guy around, but the vast majority of criminals will not cease their behavior if the city funds a few more social programs.

And Miller has only increased police spending because the province is paying for more cops. Otherwise, Toronto would not have hired any more cops.

Hiring cops is all well and good. I am not of the opinion however that hiring cops will solve this problem whatsoever. Cops tend to react to crime rather than prevent it most of the time. Where the cops on Boxing Day? There are thousands of them in Toronto and they drive up and down Yonge Street every two minutes. Apparently these hoods were having a staring competition across Yonge Street for an hour according to witnesses, slowly escalating to the point of bringing out hand guns. Where were the cops then? I will bet several cruisers drove right by these punks and did nothing. Why is that? I dunno myself.

What the cops do need is legislation with some bite. The Canadian legal system is simply too soft on criminals.

That is my rant.

They will catch the guys who did this and most likely they will get a slap on the wrist, or nothing at all.

BigBen

You think the Young Offenders Act was bad???!!!?

Try the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) that replaced the YOA. It is so soft on youth crime that kids are not even put on undertakings anymore.

If you don't put down "Keep the Peace and be of Good Behavior" on thier bail or probation record, then you can't breach them when the little shit-rats are causing shit again. What does that do? It dramatically lowers your court numbers, and VOILA!! You have lower crime, statistically speaking!

Of course, the shit-rats know this, and get into more trouble with a smile on thier face.

It is like refusing to take B&E cases anymore, and then reporting to your boss that the B&E numbers are looking excellent this fiscal quarter.

There is a better way to deal with youth crime. It is not popular, and will not be implemented. It punishes parents and legal guardians for a portion of the transgression.

Yes, I am a man without children. (at least none that I know of, ) I have experienced the judicial system as a young offender and am thankful that I was given a chance to straighten up and fly right. I was in a really bad place at home, and was lashing out the only way I knew how.

Throwing me away in jail would have hurt me, and society at large; I am now a productive person, and have achieved much with my short life thus far.

We have to teach kids that laws are here for a reason, and when you step on your dick, it will hurt. We also have to teach parents that they are ultimately responsible for the actions of their offspring, and failure in teaching them basic respect for others and their property will be met with heavy sanctions.

Did your child just break into a neighbours house? Then guess what: You get to pay for it. Every last thin dime. While you are paying for it, your child will be re-educated as to the values that our society is founded on. Oh, you can't afford it because you are poor? Then guess what: you get to do community service right next to your delinquint.

When a human life is taken, for no reason (shots were aimed at a shopping crowd, correct?) how do we express our grief? I have no answers. We can do something by not treating it like a statistic (57 murders in TO this year, blah blah blah). Statistics are often lies, and the liars who quote them have an agenda to pursue.

My heart cries out to the victims, and their families.

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highthief

I agree that Miller is a fool, and I think the majority of Canadians would support much tougher sentences for underage (and adult) offenders.

But, you know, there is a cultural problem. Taking away domestic disputes, the majority of the murders committed in the last couple of years is Jamaican on Jamaican, Somali on Somali or Sri Lankan on Sri Lankan, at least in T.O.. And it is time for these communities, most notably, to start changing their culture that embraces gangs, guns and knives, and start becoming part of the rest of society. But right now, its acceptable in these communities, especially among the kids. Guy will get gunned down in front of 200 people at a club, and there'll somehow be zero witnesses, because the community tolerates this garbage.

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HeyAgain

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing satellite police stations placed within public housing complexes around Toronto.

Here is an interesting map of all of the homicides in the GTA that have occured this year.

http://www.thestar.com/static/google...=homicides.xml

james t kirk

True. I haven't been watching the media in the last day or so, but prior to that the black community was largely silent. There were a couple of black youth leaders speaking out, one guy was fairly well spoken and was critical of this kind of behaviour. Others seemed to use the situation to get up on a soap box and say that if they had more government grants, then it would help to prevent this kind of thing.

I remember as a teenager there was a lot of talk that the media was influencing kids in their antisocial behaviour. At the time, I thought it was a lot of crap. Now, as I am approaching old-fogeydom, I am not so sure. The images of what it takes to be a "big man" that are everywhere in the media aimed at teenagers today is frightening. Kids without a strong sense or self or sense of what's right and wrong will try to emulate the crap they see coming at them from TV.

At the end of the day, there are probably about 20 reasons that this kind of crap has happened. You will never ever be able to eliminate the things that lead to violence. It's just completely awful that a 15 year old girl in the prime of her life was snuffed out for no reason other than a bunch of fools trying to act tough.

Suave

I disagree. The vast majority of criminals are, for all intents and purposes, "normal" people. The problem is that in certain situations, with certain causal factors affecting the behaviour of a person, a large proportion of people would have a tendancy to commit crime. Social programs are not necessarily the answer. Once the major causes are slowly drawn out (and they will never be completely uncovered), the whole of society must shift in order to alter or remove these factors. Anything else that is done is simply putting a bandaid on a bullet wound.

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KnifeMissile

Read about it? I was there!

I didn't see the shooting but I was prevented from walking down Yonge street because a shooting had just occured. I was there a few days later and saw the ad-hoc memorial, which I thought was quite nice. I was especially surprised and pleased at people's respect for it...