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Buzz Calls It A Day, TTC Crime Up But Not Really, Chinatown Cleaning Up

By Patrick Metzger

2008_07_09_ttc_police.jpg
Longtime Canadian Autoworkers Union head Buzz Hargrove will join other famous Buzzes, including Aldrin and Lightyear, in retirement this year. Reportedly Hargrove feels that his legacy has been cemented with this year’s twin triumphs of the Order of Canada and the collapse of the Canadian automotive industry.
The number of criminal charges laid in relation to incidents on the TTC was up substantially from 2006 to 2007, with TTC officials citing increased ridership and improved security as the reasons. Torontoist has done the cipherin’ and the number of charges jumped 19% from 2006 and 44% from 2004, while ridership was up 3.4% and 13.4% over the same periods. And shouldn’t more security means less criminal activity? Just saying.
Toronto’s Dundas and Spadina Chinatown is looking to clean up its act and draw more tourists, says the Chinatown Business Improvement Association, pointing out that “a pest control company is even dealing with (the) rat problem.” Maybe that should be the new BIA slogan.
Deputy Small Claims Court judges (typically lawyers working part-time) are upset that they’re only getting a 10% raise to $528 a day, saying they deserve at least $750 to put them in the ballpark with some full-time judges. Said a group spokesman enviously, “Man, those guys are pulling down Judge Judy-style coin.”
A Milton man has been arrested after another man died in what looks like a road rage incident on the 401 yesterday morning. A car reportedly pulled ahead of an SUV with which it had been “jockeying for position” and slammed on the brakes, causing the truck to roll over and killing the driver.
Photo by Metrix X from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

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Comments

  • TokyoTuds

    Good riddance, Buzz!
    Tuds

  • redleaf

    Thanks for omitting a punchline in the last item.

  • dowlingm

    more security probably just means more crimes reported, as opposed to people feeling it’s not worth it.

  • Patrick Metzger

    dowlingm – I know what they’re getting at; I’m just not sure I buy it.

  • alex gorbatchev

    Increase in charges doesn’t mean increase in incidents. You can actually have say 5,000 incidents last year with only 1,000 criminal charges and 3,000 incidents this year with 1,500 charges. This would correlate easily with increased security and higher charges numbers.
    Of course, without concrete numbers, it’s just a speculation.

  • Vincent Clement

    Now that the CAW executive committee has endorsed Lewenza, the other two candidates have dropped out. So after requiring that the next presidents be ‘democratically’ elected when the CAW split from the UAW, the next president will, for all intents and purposes, be acclaimed.
    Seeing as the automotive component of the CAW is in decline, this would have been a perfect opportunity for the CAW to elect someone from the non-automotive component of the CAW. You, that whole, ‘take the union forward’ thing.
    While road rage may have caused the incident, it was the lack of wearing a seatbelt that enabled the driver to be ejected from, and crushed by, the SUV an. This roll over was survivable if he had worn his seatbelt.

  • paigesix

    step one for making chinatown better would be getting rid of the skeezy subsidized housing west of spadina…

  • Green Sulfur

    Right on, Paigesix. Let’s get rid of all our subsidized housing. Then the tourists can intermingle with the 160,000 homeless people that used to live in TCHC. Or hey, since we’re going to be diverting 70% of our waste from landfill, Greenlane will have lots of room the skeezy people that used to live in housing projects to set up a shanty town.
    Talk about world class ideas. You’re a real inspiraion, Paigesix.

  • RealityCheck

    There should be no subsidized housing. It distorts the market, makes rents higher for those not in TCHC units, creates opportunity for corruption (hello students renting TCHC apartments, even when they have far more money than supposedly allowable. And give us a wave Jack Layton and Olivia Chow, you councillors who were living together in a subsidized apartment!), and gives you ridiculously horrid buildings that are worse than the slums that it “replaced”.
    Actual landlords won’t refuse the police access, but the people that go to work for public housing are all about not co-operating with police, and make TCHC and other public housing much less safe. While there are lots and lots of shitty landlords, the combination of low budgets, insanely shortsighted public budgeting process (current accounts only and capital budgets always getting raided), and a bureaucratized public sector employee base that you must rely on to do repairs gives you the sheer hell that is living in TCHC.
    Landlords do rely on the money tenants pay, they do care about the state of their buildings, and are looking at getting money for the buildings in the future (either to sell to another landlord, redevelop the units, or whatever). The ideal case would be everyone owning their own home, given the different psychologies towards rented and owned property, but the second best case is where at least SOMEONE owns the property. When the GOVERNMENT owns something, no one cares and everyone treats it like crap.
    To improve Chinatown, pretty much all of it has to go, and thankfully most of it will. Demolish the old, low buildings, intensify the hell out of it, and you’ll have gotten rid of most of the problems. Then get a real city council that wants to solve urban problems and runs garbage pickup several times a day to deter vermin, and you’ll have a great situation.
    But first we need to get rid of all the hippies who forget that the reason for garbage collection is to discourage vermin. Screw sorting and diversion, pick up garbage and get it out of the city to prevent dangers to public health. but Torontoist and council want to protect raccoons, squirrels, and skunks, encourage Bubonic Plague, and go to a Pol Pot Year Zero situation.
    Death to vermin, death to hippies!

  • Green Sulfur

    It is no secret Layton and Chow were paying market rates in a mixed income co-op building. Surely you won’t accuse people paying market rate for their unit in the new Don Mount community or, eventually Regent Park, of stealing subsidized housing, will you?
    But your entire premise that private is better is pure BS. Have you seen the state of privately owned housing on Weston Road? Did you see the Toronto Sun’s article on the weekend about the Sorbara Group being slum lords?…There are hundreds and hundreds of examples of private slum lords in this city. Being privately owned doesn’t mean jack shit.
    And your generalizations about TCHC are totally unfounded. Got any proof that TCHC is doing anything above ensuring its residents’ rights are protected, as required by law?

  • paigesix

    I didn’t say get rid of ALL, I said get rid of the skeezy.
    Do you honestly feel safe walking down Augusta south of Dundas after dark? Can you not notice the VAST difference in development along Dundas between the East and West sides Spadina? Providing cheap shelter is not enough; if there’s no community infrastructure it’s just not viable and certainly not able to become an “improved” business area.

  • andrew

    If we’re gonna throw anecdotes around, I’ve worked with TCHC staff who have collegial – critical, but collegial – relationships with the police. I’m not convinced on the distortion of the market created by subsidized housing – Toronto and the GTA are a pretty good example of how the end of subsidization, the reduction of welfare, and deregulation of housing can actually lead to a fantastic leap in housing costs – but I’m totally willing to entertain info on it.
    Having lived in various privately owned rental housing, I can testify that private landlords aren’t as altruistic as Reality Check presents, at least not all. Maybe they’re just stupid, but they spent as little as possible on upkeep and repair, knowing full well the Tribunal would back them if a conflict ever came about. Obviously not all landlords are like that – I’d like to think a lot do treat their properties as investments, and keep them in excellent condition because they want the best for their tenants.
    Lastly, bringing Pol Pot into the discussion in any way shape or form as a comparison of current City Council practice is basically godwinning the comments here. And if Reality Check really thought and didn’t want to just incite flame wars, he’d have looked at the cute little raccoon cartoon and our various comments on how impossible it is to get rid of the pesky buggers. Somehow I don’t think Torontoist is a raccoon-lovin’ spoonful.

  • rek

    I’ve never even met my current landlord, and at my last apartment three years of asking that landlord still didn’t get anything done.
    If you’re a landlord downtown you don’t need to care. Just avoid the courts as best you can; inevitably a condo developer will knock on your door and you can name your price.

  • Ben

    You’re lucky. My landlady lives right across the hall, and her hobby is criticizing minutiae.