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18 Comments

news

Where Does the Osgoode Go?

By David Topping

20090122TTCealerts.jpg
While the TTC’s e-Alerts have been around for just over a week now, the message just sent out to subscribers (above) marks only the second time that the system has alerted riders when something is back up rather than just when something is down (after all the blackout chaos, we e-mailed Adam Giambrone earlier this week and told him that we thought the mostly missing feature was an important one). Why are trains still skipping Osgoode? Well, there’s this thing: as surveillance cameras watched, a 19-year-old man was shot at the station just before 10:45 a.m. this morning, and he is now at the hospital in serious condition with non-life-threatening injuries. CityNews says that they have “exclusive video captured just moments after the shooting took place,” to be aired at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. tonight, and if the channel’s coverage of rats in restaurants is any indication, it will totally not be sensationalized or blown out of proportion at all.

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  • http://undefined RealityCheck

    What counts as “blown out of proportion” for a shooting in broad daylight at a downtown subway platform?
    It’s a regular weekday morning, the station serves the courts, the Opera House, and a good chunk of offices. Apparently no bystanders were injured this time, but it is a huge problem and deeply scary.
    You’re generally safe in Toronto if you stay out of certain neighbourhoods and don’t deal drugs. But now we’re having shootings in the notionally safest parts of the city.
    People are getting shot around King W for no reason, and this is the second shooting in the subway in a year. You’re just repeating the Dinkins era NYC attitude “oh it’s no big deal”. That lead to the near destruction and abandonment of NYC and the same attitude has lead to the complete abandonment of Detroit, Oakland, and other cities. We need to take a serious Giuliani approach to this – not some stupid closure of a gun club or trying to make illegal guns extra super duper illegal. Full time SWAT policing of TCHC, mandatory consecutive sentences, quadrupling of all maximum sentences for property and violent crime, elimination of statutory release and pre-trial credit, eliminate judicial discretion for property and violent crimes so that the only sentence is the now quadrupled maximum.
    Do that and you will cut crime in the city and make the streets safe. But instead Miller will complain about guns that are already functionally illegal and won’t try to catch or lock up criminals.

  • David Topping

    “What counts as “blown out of proportion” for a shooting in broad daylight at a downtown subway platform?”
    “We need to take a serious Giuliani approach to this – not some stupid closure of a gun club or trying to make illegal guns extra super duper illegal. Full time SWAT policing of TCHC, mandatory consecutive sentences, quadrupling of all maximum sentences for property and violent crime, elimination of statutory release and pre-trial credit, eliminate judicial discretion for property and violent crimes so that the only sentence is the now quadrupled maximum.”
    Looks like you answered your own question.

  • http://null dulapul

    “Looks like you answered your own question.”
    Even if I am not sure if this “Giuliani approach” cited by RealityCheck would be the solution, I have to say that you have the sense of responsibility of a 10 years old. You should not write about this kind of issue in a publication, smarts or sarcasms are far from being good enough.

  • http://null EsplanadeGuy

    “Full time SWAT policing of TCHC, ”
    I don’t know whether to laugh or be offended by your complete ignorance…

  • http://null dowlingm

    David – some outrage is merited. The subway is claustrophobic and stressful for those who take it – the least we can expect is not be shot while taking it. I don’t subscribe to RealityCheck but we need more visible presence by the special constables on platforms and riding trains. If this had happened at a major station like Union or Yonge-Bloor it would have substantially paralysed the transit system.

  • http://undefined David Topping

    @dowlingm, I mostly agree. I really never intended to downplay the severity of what happened today (I feel like dulapul maybe isn’t a regular reader of Torontoist and doesn’t realize that I like doing stuff like spending days at the library researching crime statistics, like I did for my Metrocide series); I think that a shooting at Osgoode Station is absolutely a big deal. I just don’t think losing our collective shit—which leads to totally awful ideas like sending SWAT teams in to police public housing—is ever the way to prevent stuff like this from happening again, and in fact makes the problem much worse. A random shooting in the city like this one is the exception, not the rule, and if we want violent crime to be even rarer than it is now I think that we need to move towards solutions that are both immediate and doable (more police, or in this case TTC constables; tougher laws, penalties, and gun control regulations) and those that really work to fix the real causes of crime but that take a lot of time, money, and effort (reducing poverty, improving education).

  • http://undefined Val Dodge

    Having signed up for the TTC’s service alerts, my overriding impression is that a section of the subway is shut down and shuttle buses are in service far more often than I would have thought.

  • http://null PickleToes

    “…and those that really work to fix the real causes of crime but that take a lot of time, money, and effort (reducing poverty, improving education).”
    Socialism eliminates crime?

  • http://null rek

    Harsher sentencing doesn’t deter it.

  • http://null Lauriemc

    At first I thought RealityCheck had made a typo while trying to type “TTC” Surely he couldn’t be suggesting community housing in Toronto had something to do with a subway shooting!?!
    And as for David’s comments about CityNews coverage this scenario was no exception: the “exclusive” shot of the wounded victim talking on his cellphone was no doubt very chilling to rocket riders.

  • http://null badbhoy

    You made some good points there but let’s back it up here for a second.
    “That lead to the near destruction and abandonment of NYC and the same attitude has lead to the complete abandonment of Detroit, Oakland, and other cities”.
    I am quite certain that the downfall of Detroit, Oakland, etc. is a bit more complicated that indifference to crime in the downtown core.

  • http://null uskyscraper

    As I patiently tried to argue in the Metrocide series, Toronto has a serious problem with public shootings in high profile parts of town. The city is very safe statistically, but it is so safe overall that criminals have no fear whatsoever in shooting up public spaces. This is counterintuitive but true. Count the number of shootings in downtown Toronto compared to, say, Chicago inside the loop or Manhattan south of 59th St and you will be shocked. Compare the 401 to New York highways, or the TTC overall to the MTA in Manhattan – same story. Wake up Toronto, you are not the smug place you think you are.
    The citywide averages hide the fact that thugs feel that they can act in public as they would not act in their own living rooms without reprisal, and the more safe and central the place the better. It’s truly sad to see the city’s image suffer like this. Crack some heads.

  • http://null PickleToes

    Probably not.

  • http://null dulapul

    I am not a regular reader, David, I like to learn about the city life from your publication but I think there is no cool (or statistical, but I`ll not start this one) way to talk about a shooting even if we all understand the meaning.

  • http://null chenyip

    To a certain extent I agree with RealityCheck. Although highly un-ethical, immoral and borderline racist, the containment of criminal element to the poor neighborhoods – the ghettos – of said American cities have worked. Manhattan ranks as one of the nations lower crime rates and incidents of violent crimes and fire-arm related crimes are virtually non-existent. Anyone who’s visited New York over the course of 10+ years will know this. The LES, once known as Manhattan’s harbinger of criminal element is now occupied by hip twenty somethings and the creative underclass. You can walk around the LES now. You couldn’t 10 – 15 years ago.
    That said, crime in deep pockets of Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and North Harlem are still high. Not to mention the city has fostered neighborhoods of marginalized people that are frustrated to the tits and have nothing but disdain for cops. And we’re not even touching on the racial divide.
    It’s a tough issue with lots of gray areas. But the one thing I do agree on is that until the city takes a no-bullshit stance on this, we’re going to continue to have thugs from all corners of the city using what ever part of the city as their personal firing range.

  • http://null x_the_x

    I say we strap Topping in a chair, cut off his emo haircut and enrol him in police college. Who is with me?

  • David Topping

    (Also blowing it out of proportion: this.)

  • http://null DaveH

    Who`s next?
    Well actually it was a cop tonight.