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About 70 per cent of those cases have been solved, Idsinga says, although that success is also an indicator of more work ahead for his team.

If we're going to keep a pace of 90-100 murders a year, we have to re-think how we're staffing investigations

“That means about 70 cases will go before the courts, and that takes up a lot of manpower and time,” he says.

The force’s statistics indicate 51 of the year’s homicides were by shooting, 20 by stabbing, 10 were part of an April van attack and 15 were by “other means.”

The city’s police chief has attributed the overall rise in homicides to an increase in gang violence.

But the force has also noted that the city’s homicide figures have remained relatively stable in the years since 1991 even as the city’s population has grown considerably. Toronto boasted 2.3 million residents in 1991, compared to a population of 2.7 million as of the 2016 census.

Photo by Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS

For Idsinga, who was told in early December that he was formally being made head of the homicide squad, the year has been marked by several high-profile cases and new developments within the team.

The 51-year-old spent the first six months of 2018 as the lead detective on the investigation into alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur, who faces eight counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of men with ties to the city’s gay village.

In July, Idsinga became the acting head of the homicide squad and began planning his transformation of the team.

“We will have a lot of new faces and a lot of movement within the squad,” he says, noting six detectives have already been brought to help alleviate the workload of the unit’s 48 detectives.