The Lawyers Weekly - June 22, 2012

The June 2 shootings inside the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto, where two people were killed and six others injured, including a 13-year-old boy, provided the city—and the country — with another example of the devastating toll firearms can take. But some of the reaction was difficult to digest. Talk about history repeating itself.

Politicians put forward predictable rhetoric and journalists raced to portray the incident as a gang clash—complete with an inevitable reference to gangster rap affiliations — even though Toronto police were quick to play down those claims, saying it was allegedly a targeted shooting, but not a gang dispute.

The outrage over the Eaton Centre incident mirrored the aftermath of the 2005 Yonge Street shooting that took the life of Jane Creba and injured six others. The reaction to that tragedy was itself a repeat of the response to a spate of gun violence in the city in late 2003.

For most people in Toronto, this latest shooting was a reminder that gun crime is still a significant problem. For some communities, it was a reminder that the problem only attracts attention when it spills beyond the borders of certain Toronto neighbourhoods. The response also revealed that, for the most part, we are unpre-

OPINION

CHRISTIAN
PEARCE

Dealing with that demand, with the social dynamics that lead young men to pick up and use guns...is the more complex part. It is also the part that mostly goes ignored.

“

Christian Pearce Lawyer/Author

pared to deal effectively with the issue of gun crime.

Calling it a gang problem , and
the allegations in this case don’t
fit so neatly, dehumanizes and
vilifies those involved. What’s
worse, the media have ingrained
a message that young black men
are bound to end up either as
athletes or gangsters. The issue
takes on an air of inevitability,
and harsher punishments
become the only answer. But
potential solutions are both more
and less complex.

Christian Pearce is a Toronto defence lawyer and co-author of Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent, which was a finalist for the 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction.

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Troubled teen found unlikely support: Rob Ford

Politician was character
witness for armed
robber in Toronto case

SHANNON KARI

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has long been known as pro-police and a politician supporting the “tough on crime” approach to dealing with law-breakers.

Yet, not so long ago, the then-city councillor Ford was the only person willing to come to court and testify in support of a teenager who along with an accomplice, used a sawed-off shotgun to rob a Toronto taxi driver.

Frequently, those convicted of gun crimes in Toronto have little community or family support in court by the time they are about to be sentenced. Character witnesses are rare and it is virtually unheard of for an elected politician to ask a judge for leniency for someone guilty of a serious offence.

CHRIS YOUNG / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford at police headquarters, addressing the media on June 4, 2012, in the aftermath of a fatal shooting at the Eaton Centre shopping mall.

Ford, who had coached B.Y. (The Lawyers Weekly is identifying him by his initials) in high school football, knew him as a “respectful” player and model teammate—not as the person convicted of an armed robbery committed while out on bail.