As Toronto’s police chief outlined a plan for increased guns and gang enforcement Wednesday, academics and advocates said they continue to be frustrated by what they call a short-sighted approach to the problem.

For the second summer in a row, the Toronto Police Service is launching a multimillion-dollar initiative to combat gun violence by putting more resources into on-the-ground policing in problem areas. This time, Chief Mark Saunders said, it’s an 11-week, $4.5-million initiative dubbed “Project Community Space” that will see officers under the direction of the service’s guns and gangs task force conduct intelligence-led work.

In the wake of a rash of gun violence in recent weeks — including the fatal shooting Friday of 29-year-old Kevin Reddick — Mayor John Tory announced Monday that municipal, provincial and federal governments would each pledge $1.5 million “to help fund immediate efforts to address the current gun violence.”

But researchers say increased policing is not the long-term strategy needed to curb gun violence that has increased since last year, when mounting public pressure led Saunders and Tory announce $3 million to send 200 additional officers to patrol high-risk areas.

“It’s just so tiring to repeat the same thing over and over again,” said University of Toronto sociologist Akwasi Owusu-Bempah. He said Saunders and Tory have both said “‘We can’t arrest our way out of these problems’ — and then they promise more money to the police.”

Owusu-Bempah said the type of policing proposed may temporarily reduce retaliatory violence, but that some police tactics can also erode confidence in the force.

“These are simply short-term approaches and in the long run these are not the solutions to these problems,” he said, likening the policing efforts to putting “Band-Aids on the social wounds” born of social, political and economic marginalization.

Owusu-Bempah believes the types of programs needed to combat those issues aren’t “politically appetizing” because they can take 10 or even 20 years to produce measurable results.

Toronto-based researcher Fiona Scott, who worked with city staff on the Toronto Youth Equity Strategy and whose expertise is in the roots of violence, said increased policing “is not making communities any safer.”

Scott said calling the new initiative Project Community Space “seems like a kick in the teeth to those people who are creating community spaces.” She said it’s “insane” that non-profit organizations face onerous requirements for small grants to sustain community-based programs for at-risk youth, while police are being promised $1.5 million by the city with little oversight.

“What are the chances that they will be in the right place at the right time to stop something?” she said. “How about we prevent somebody from getting to that place in the first place?

“Giving money to community groups is going to have a better impact than police in terms of prevention.”

There are decades of research on the root causes of violence, she said, including a seminal review presented to the province more than a decade ago by former speaker of the Ontario legislature Alvin Curling and former chief justice Roy McMurtry that identified pervasive problems of poverty, racism, issues in the education system and lack of job opportunities.

“It’s not a lack of police that causes violence,” Scott said.

A motion from Councillor Josh Matlow for the city to spend almost $1.5 million on eight new dedicated youth hubs was rejected by Tory and a majority of councillors earlier this year. On Wednesday, he reiterated that policing isn’t the answer.

“We need to support the police to respond when gun violence occurs, but enforcement alone is a short-term and reactive measure if the factors that lead to violence aren’t meaningfully addressed,” Matlow said.

“Let’s focus on working with community organizations and experts who are telling us safe, supportive environments for at-risk youth are the best ways to meaningfully curb gang violence, change lives and create safer communities.”

The $1.5 million required is what Tory has now committed — without council approval — the city will provide to police.

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Saunders told reporters there will be an update on the success of the new policing plan in November.

Asked why the initiative is again coming after a wave of violence instead of as a preplanned initiative, Saunders acknowledged summers are consistently busier but said street gang violence is “dynamic” and hard to consistently predict.

“One situation or two events can turn into a multitude of flashpoints at any given time of the year,” he said. “There is no, ‘Every year this is going to happen at this time’ — you don’t know to what magnitude or to what degree.”

“I can tell you the street gang presence is a lot more sophisticated, there are more guns that are in the city, and we have to figure out how to reduce the gun violence but at the same time, not turn neighbourhoods and communities upside-down.”

Toronto has seen a surge in gun violence in recent weeks, with 267 confirmed shootings so far this year — a five-year high, and nearly 20 more than this time last year.

But the city is at a three-year low when it comes to fatal shootings — there have been 20 so far this year, down from 30 at this time last year, 23 in 2017 and 26 in 2016.

Earlier this year, the Toronto Police Services Board granted the force a $30-million budget increase, bringing the total operating budget to above $1 billion for the first time since 2016.

At the time, Tory said the money would “put more police officers on the streets as part of the plan to address the increase in violence that we have seen in the city.”

Despite last summer’s stepped-up enforcement, there was not a reduction in the number of shootings by year’s end. There were 428 shootings in Toronto in 2018, a five-year high.

However, during the period when the officers were deployed, the number of shootings did decrease compared to past years. There were 63 shootings throughout the eight-week period when police were deployed — a 13 per cent reduction over the same eight-week period in 2017 (when there were 73 shootings) and a 25 per cent reduction during the same weeks in 2016 (84 shootings).

Read more:

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Tory announces $4.5M for gun violence initiative, ‘confident’ councillors will support him

Struggling with violence, Lawrence Heights may not get the community centre it was promised

Wendy Gillis is a Toronto-based reporter covering crime and policing. Reach her by email at wgillis@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @wendygillis

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