In days of yore, I might have described it as cop porn.

But columnist-me was actually more skeptical then about the travails of policing in a big city.

So here we had, on Friday morning, a display of guns seized in Operation Patton — most of them 9 mm pistols, stripped of their essential parts.

In jelly-bean colours, a bunch of them, looking like toys.

Semi-automatics, meaning near-continuous bullet-spray with just the press of a finger.

“As fast as you pull the trigger, it’ll keep firing until it’s empty,” explained Bruce Finn, acting senior firearms officer for the Toronto Police Service.

Read more:

Toronto police seize their largest single stash of guns in raids targeting street gang

How to stop gun violence in Toronto

John Tory wants tougher laws, more money to fight gang-related gun violence in Toronto

A sawed-off shotgun. Four Tasers. A drill press to manufacture and modify guns. A cocaine press. A bulletproof vest.

Bags of bundled cash. Bags of heroin. Bags of fentanyl. Bags of cocaine. Bigger bags of marijuana — enough that the stench of weed assaulted one’s nostrils when stepping through the front doors of police headquarters on College St., a hundred feet from the Jocko Thomas gallery where investigators trotted out narcotics and illegal weapons lassoed in pre-dawn raids targeting the notorious Five Points Generalz gang a day earlier.

Seventy-eight firearms — 75 handguns and three long guns. Sixty of those weapons were snatched from one person, on his way from Cornwall to Toronto, allegedly the main guns procurer for 5PGz. Most of them originally purchased — perhaps legally — in Florida, not a common source for gun smuggling into Canada.

Sixty of the guns were brand new — “clean” in the criminal argot, having never been used in a shooting. Sold for around $400 at retail level, worth about $200,000 on the street.

Also seized: 270 rounds of ammunition of various calibres, 75 firearm magazines, plus an additional 55 “overcapacity” magazines — holding extra bullets makes them immediately illegal; narcotics with a street value of $1.2 million; $184,000 in cash, alleged to be the proceeds of criminal activity.

Two hundred cellphones.

Enough of a haul — the most guns ever recovered by Toronto cops in a single operation — that investigators claim they’ve seriously disrupted 5PGz operations, with top-echelon members among the 75 individuals (nine of them females) arrested “thus far,” all of them spinning through the Finch St. W. courthouse on Thursday and remanded.

It’s unclear how many, if any, made bail.

More than 1,000 charges laid, ranging from possession to robbery to murder and attempted murder.

But we’ve been here before.

Eight years ago, Project Corral targeted the same gang. Thirteen individuals arrested in Corral were also arrested in Patton.

Sixty-eight of the accused have prior criminal records.

The Five Point Generalz, spawned in the public housing towers around Weston Rd. and Lawrence Ave. W., have been around for some two decades, stretching back to the days when police were still assuring the city that there were no gangs in Toronto, not the real thing anyway, just wannabes. But circa 2018, the Generalz, purportedly associated with the Crips, are big-time players, a full-blown co-ordinated criminal organization connected to numerous murders and attempted murders over the years.

They will doubtless regenerate, reconstitute and reload.

You just don’t take 5PGz off the board, no matter how pleased cops are, rightly so, with the results of Project Patton.

“The information we have in relation to murders and attempted murders really formed the genesis of this investigation,” said Acting Insp. Don Belanger, of the guns and gangs task force. “We had intelligence we felt was legitimate, concrete, that this group was involved in those activities. As the investigation unfolded, we have put people before the courts who were involved in firearms discharges and attempted murder.”

A multi-jurisdictional investigative undertaking that began nine months ago, involving some dozen law enforcement agencies, including the RCMP, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau in the U.S., Canadian and American border services.

Criminal activities with tentacles that stretched across Canada and down to the Caribbean.

Only two of the accused are minors, under the age of 18. “The individuals arrested in this operation are not simply kids being exploited by gang members,” said Belanger, “nor are they addicts being used to support their addictions. They are organized criminals. A significant number of them are no strangers to the criminal justice system.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

In-and-out of jail. Undaunted by incarceration. It’s their thing.

And while police have also put into place gang-prevention strategies as part of Project Patton, to divert those at risk or in thrall to criminality, don’t hold your breath.

“There are absolutely people that served their sentence, were released, and chose to return to a life of criminality,” said Belanger of those rounded up Thursday.

Endlessly frustrating for the integrated guns and gangs task force in the major projects section.

As police Chief Mark Saunders had observed the day before, when the arrests were announced: “There’s no magic pill to community safety. We play one strong element — enforcement. If we’re going to get this right, there has to be a more holistic solution. There’s that incarceration piece. But 90 per cent of the people we apprehend are being released.”

That’s the courts and the Crowns and some very good defence lawyers doing their jobs — which puts the malefactors back on the streets pending trial.

Don’t go thinking these are just maladjusted young people from marginalized and over-policed communities who can be diverted from gangs and guns if only we dedicated more resources to social programs. Some might. Others become too deeply entrenched — for the money, the swagger, the street cred.

They kill and are killed.

And so, somewhere down the line, there will be another Project Something-or-other, another booty haul, another court document crammed with defendants. Either the Generalz or some other gang, including those rubbing their palms together with the purported crippling of the 5PGz.

“We’re not naïve,” said Belanger. “We do realize it creates a void. We realize that drugs equal easy money. And there will always be people to step in and fill that void.”

Adding, “Of course it’s frustrating. We know that not everyone that goes through the correctional process comes out rehabilitated. That’s just the reality of it. Unfortunately, these people are lured back into the gang life. Let’s be honest, I don’t think a day will ever come where we can completely stop that.’’

Then he stressed again: Out of 98 arrested in Project Corral in 2010, following a spike in shootings and violence in northwest Toronto, 13 cuffed again in Project Patton.

“This is essentially one gang and its associates,” said Belanger of the Thursday raids. “There are several gangs, as we know, across the city. This stalls one operation.”

Those who will likely rush to rationalize the criminality of gangbangers — few appealing options, a dearth of straight-life opportunities, stigmatization, alienation, glorification of gangs in contemporary culture, quasi-carding — might do better to spare some pity for communities plagued by violent crime.

“The removal of such a significant number of violent individuals from our communities will be very positive for law-abiding community members who have been forced to live among individuals who are believed to be gunmen and drug dealers, many of whom have displayed a total disregard for human safety,” said Deputy Chief Jim Ramer. “This proactive enforcement, though essential, is but one element of a multi-layered approach comprised of various levels of government that must continue to work collaboratively and continue to improve how we assist our communities.”

Orange guns, blue guns, green guns, yellow guns, even a girlie pink gun.

“That was a first for me to see that, and it’s very concerning,” said Ramer. “When I first saw it, I commented that the one in orange looked like a water pistol that my granddaughter has and how easily that can be misinterpreted by someone looking at them.”

A cop, for instance, confronted by what might look like a plaything.

So a safety bulletin has gone out to all police officers to beware of looks-like-a-toy pistols pointed at them.

And where do you think that might lead, when it is a toy?