That was an emotionally wrenching photograph the Star published on its front page Wednesday.

A frail 96-year-old Somali woman with sunken cheeks and one rheumy eye staring blankly, protectively embraced by her daughter.

Here, surely, was a human being who required gentleness.

Police raids at dawn are, by definition, not gentle operations. Doors are kicked open, flash-bangs are released, suspects and other individuals rousted from their beds, cuffed and separated.

What the photograph did not show: the elderly woman’s grandson, arrested in the massive raids last Thursday, among more than 40 people charged and 300 charges in Project Traveller — specifically, in the case of 29-year-old Siyadin Abdi, participating in a criminal organization, trafficking in firearms and ammunition, and unauthorized possession of a firearm.

If Fadumo Sidin Hersi, the grandmother, was frightened and hurt when police forced their way into the family’s Dixon Rd. apartment unit in Little Mogadishu, the finger of blame should be pointed at the grandson for putting his kinfolk in the crosshairs of a police investigation that consumed a year of probing and co-ordination.

But there was this ancient lady and her 65-year-old daughter, trotted out by the African Canadian Legal Clinic as Exhibit A in the purported use of excessive force applied during raids that were widely welcomed by a Somali-Canadian community under siege from within.

Their sons victimized by a sophisticated street gang, the Dixon City Bloods.

Their sons drawn into criminality and hoodlum swagger.

Their neighbourhood paying the disproportionate price in violence and fear.

I am not a cop-suck. But I don’t believe for a minute that the daughter, Saeda Sidin Hersi, was kicked in the face by an officer. It may be true that Fadumo Sidin Hersi fell out of bed during the commotion and injured herself, spilling blood. Old people are fragile. And I’ve no doubt that some cops are thuggish in executing orders. But in the dark, inside an apartment where an illegal firearm was seized, home to a man facing such serious charges, I also understand adrenalin surge and unintended consequences.

What I do not care for — not one fig — is the complaint advanced that police were reckless and “culturally insensitive.”

Saeda Sidin Hersi, a Muslim woman, was distressed that her bare legs were exposed during the incident. While sympathetic that she should have felt shame about this, I do not accept the relevance. Perhaps the shame might more properly accrue from a son who allegedly brought firearms into her home and is purported to be a gang member.

Police have bent over backwards to avoid stigmatizing an entire community. Chief Bill Blair was clearly conflicted, at his press conference only hours after the raid, when asked if those arrested were primarily of Somali ethnicity. But he couldn’t avoid stating facts. “I will tell you that many of the people that we have apprehended . . . are of Somali descent. That’s not to suggest that this particular gang has a particular ethnic origin but many of the people are (Somali). We know also many of the victims of that crime and living in that community are of Somali descent. They have been perhaps more traumatized by this violence than anyone else. It’s not only some of their sons who might be involved in this crime but many of their sons who’ve been victims of this crime.”

Blair took pains to emphasize that police had broad support from citizens in the area, some of whom had been pleading for action against criminal elements in their midst, and that police were following up with raids with community outreach undertakings.

This was repeated by Deputy Chief Peter Sloly at a second press conference the following day, where some of the arsenal seized was on display — frightening military-style assault weapons, sawed-off shotguns and numerous handguns.

There was nothing pell-mell about Project Traveller, said Sloly. “It was specifically (aimed) at those criminals who were victimizing this community.”

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The operation, he explained, had three components: intelligence-led raids, risk-focused enforcement and community mobilization. “It’s a fancy word. It’s a simple concept. Making sure that the problems that this community faced don’t come back in again, making sure that the gang which was dismantled doesn’t form again, making sure that a new gang doesn’t form in the vacuum of the one that was just dismantled, making sure the community feels safer, not just for a few days or a few weeks or a few months.”

Sloly added: “We’re not doing this in opposition to the community. We’re doing it in co-operation and co-ordination with the community.”

Somali-Canadians, coming from a lawless failed-state country in the tumultuous Horn of Africa, have good reason to fear men with guns who represent authority. There’s little to distinguish criminals from soldiers and gang armies in Somalia. It is entirely understandable that Fadumo Sidin Hersi has been traumatized by the raids, that every time the old woman hears the door opening, she cries out: “The soldiers are coming, they’re coming.”

But Canada is not Somalia and cops aren’t a warlord militia. If officers used unreasonable force during any facet of last week’s raids, those complaints will be investigated. None have been formally filed.

Two decades ago, when Jamaican gangs were terrorizing Toronto neighbourhoods, police were blasted for profiling criminality. But profiling is very much a legitimate investigative tool — among many other factors — when analyzing commonalities. It’s deductive reasoning. There was a problem with some Jamaican men and youths and even that ethnic community finally admitted it. You can’t begin to fix what we’re not even allowed to mention.

The cultural and social distress is now apparent among Somalis who fled a country at endless war, seeking refuge in Canada. It’s hard, with fractured families and dreadful experience of violence, for Somali parents to keep their sons from falling in thrall to local street gangs. But this phenomenon isn’t primarily a policing issue because cops aren’t social workers or psychologists or anthropologists. They deal with the result, not the cause.

Project Traveller resulted in 44 arrests and upwards of 300 charges, including murder and attempt murder. Forty-two firearms and some $3 million worth of drugs were taken off the streets.

Little Mogadishu is a safer place to live today.

No thanks necessary. But a kick in the head from the culturally aggrieved is a cheap shot.