The shock of the shooting in Scarborough the other day is reverberating throughout Toronto. People are angry. Their leaders are the losers. Everyone pontificates and nobody has any answers.
Do the kids with guns have to kill as many people as are killed in Chicago to convince the mayor there is a problem? Only a fool plays the numbers game. In a perfect world, one death is wrong. Mayor Ford has his priorities. He was elected to halt the ‘gravy train.’ When he found out there was no gravy train, he could have had the decency to resign. He remains a lame duck politician, mouthing platitudes.
Toronto still has not fired Bill Blair. The Toronto police chief disgraced the city two years ago at the G20 and has been posturing ever since. He beat the politicians to the news media gathering on the Scarborough shooting scene. In full regalia, he promised action, retribution and raised public fears of gang retaliation. The Toronto news media faithfully reported his words.
One problem is that these wannabe Toronto hoods seem to be consistently lousy shots. It keeps the death toll low but it is hell on bystanders. It is never open season on the innocents and it turns the entire community against the malefactors. If there were a properly organized organized-crime element in Toronto, you would think they would have a few surreptitious pistol ranges where the future fodder for gun wars could learn something about gun safety and marksmanship.
But our first priority must be the innocents. It offers opportunities. It opens up entire new lines of clothing for children. Can you just imagine the cute little play suit with Kevlar lining that the child can wear when going with mummy to the Eaton Centre? Or the steel helmet worn rakishly when having the tyke’s face painted at a local barbeque.
Toronto is a big city. It offers freedom and opportunity to people of all races, religions, cultures and interests. It is a city that can do better than a Rob Ford for mayor. It is a city that does not need a posturing mouthpiece for a police chief. It is a city that needs to care about opportunities for the individual in our society. Making that happen is critical to the city’s future.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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