Handgun bans. Anti-gang crackdowns. Easy bail. In Toronto, as the number of people killed or injured in shootings continues to surge, such terms are often used by municipal leaders, politicians, police. But what do we really know about guns, gangs, and possible solutions to a growing violence problem? In an ongoing series, the Star is aiming to find answers … and to find out when we don’t know the answers … to some life-and-death questions.

Rebecca Metcalfe has depended on a Scarborough drop-in program as a safe space to play basketball and take part in other activities since she was 14.

Every Thursday and Friday, the towering 17-year-old can be found shooting hoops at the space operated by IMPACT ‘n Communities, a non-profit known for its youth programs.

“Places like these help kids stay out of trouble,” says Metcalfe, who dreams of being a professional basketball player and sports journalist.

Youth across the city rely on programs like IMPACT’s as safe havens in a city that has seen an increase in gun violence. They offer direct connections to mentors, nutritious snacks, homework help and recreation, opportunities that are especially needed in priority areas where poverty, racism and other factors put youth at risk.

As governments and police grapple with how to curb the ongoing violence while communities suffer the trauma, those who run services for youth say these vital programs aimed at preventing youth from picking up a gun in the first place need to be better prioritized.

This week, after a shooting near Black Creek Drive and Eglinton Avenue West sent five teens to hospital, police efforts were again beefed up while politicians called for more community supports and offered their “thoughts and prayers.”

“It seems like the government favours funding the police more than putting money into youth programs when we need the help more,” says Metcalfe. “We need more programs that can help this community grow and become more positive.”

IMPACT’s drop-in on Kingston Road, one of two spaces the agency operates, once served as a place of comfort for Shyanne Charles, who frequented the program before she was shot and killed at a 2012 block party on Danzig St. — the worst mass shooting in the city’s history — less than a kilometre east of the IMPACT site.

On a recent afternoon, Eric Cupido, the drop-in’s supervisor, is greeting youth when a girl makes her way past her older peers to ask a question Cupido has heard many times before:

“What’s for dinner?”

Cupido rhymes off the day’s menu of chicken, pasta, rice and salad. The youngster says she plans to stick around for the warm meal before racing off to the nearby gym to join Metcalfe and others who are passing around a basketball.

Above Cupido in the office where he sits is a poster bearing Charles’ image.

“For many of these kids, this is the only place they have to go that keeps them out of trouble around here,” he says.

Tyrese Heavens, 20, who lived in the community housing building where the Kingston Road drop-in is housed before moving to Regent Park last year, says he still makes the trip from downtown twice a week to shoot hoops.

“It keeps youth away from drugs and all the other bad influences out there,” he says. “There is so much anger out there and these programs are important to help youth learn how to deal with that.”

Are governments prioritizing funding for police and enforcement, or for community supports?

When it comes to the number of announcements made and total dollars spent in reaction to gun violence in recent years, there’s no question enforcement has been heavily favoured.

On the policing side, the federal government has pledged $65 million in anti-guns-and-gangs initiatives in Ontario over five years, though it is unclear how much of that will benefit Toronto specifically. The money allocated so far is being directed by the province toward policing projects, special prosecutors and other enforcement efforts.

Another $1.5 million was promised by the federal government for an 11-week Toronto police initiative, Project Community Space, that has focused on “intelligence-led” arrests in priority neighbourhoods.

Premier Doug Ford’s provincial government has committed $16.4 million over two years to beef up enforcement efforts, including creating a guns and gangs enforcement unit to assist police and prosecutors. That funding was also said to be for preventative programs like a pilot project in schools to look at the overrepresentation of some groups of students in suspension and expulsion data.

A previous $25 million promise from the provincial government is expected to see an additional $18 million over four years for Toronto police initiatives.

And a further $3 million was promised by the province this summer for new CCTV cameras operated by Toronto police.

The city itself recently kicked in $1.5 million for the police’s Project Community Space.

Funding for Toronto police largely comes from the city through property taxes and remains the single largest item on residents’ bills. A smaller portion, four per cent or $47.6 million in the 2019 budget, comes from the federal and provincial governments. In 2019, council approved a more than $1 billion budget, which was a $30 million increase over the previous year. The vast majority of that money goes to paying the salaries and benefits of uniformed officers and civilian staff.

Community programs aimed at tackling gun violence can take many forms, from trained workers who meet with young people who have already been incarcerated and help them finish their education or learn new job skills, to providing after-school recreation like music programs or sports to youth in high-risk areas.

Most community programs in Toronto are operated by non-profit agencies which rely heavily on charitable donations and volunteers as well as some limited grant funding from the city and province to stay open from year to year.

The city directly partners with some community groups through the youth equity strategy and other initiatives and operates its own services such as the more than 20 dedicated youth hubs in libraries and community centres across the city.

On that front, the city included $2.5 million in additional funds in the 2019 budget to help with the Toronto Youth Equity Strategy — a series of recommendations meant to directly intervene with at-risk youth as well as preventative measures — that has yet to be fully implemented since council approved it in 2014.

At the same time, council has resisted the push to commit the total $1.5 million needed for a staff-designed intervention program for youth, calling first for a business case, and has refused to accelerate the building of new community spaces, which city staff say could be doubled at a cost of $3.3 million.

Following a 2018 request from council to the federal government to fund their anti-violence plan — for which the city offered up none of its own funds — the federal government provided $6.8 million for a community healing project which hires and trains youth as mentors in priority areas, but left another $26.2 million for requested projects unfunded.

On Friday, Mayor John Tory said he thinks “it is time now for us all to step up and do more and that is something that I am talking to people in the other governments about.

“I think the thing we have to note, however, is putting those community supports in place doesn’t necessarily have a kind of immediate effect on some of these acts of random violence, especially involving guns. But it is an investment we have to make certainly in the medium and long term.”

What does the research say about how to prioritize government spending?

At the heart of the accepted research on community violence is that there are social circumstances that affect the risk of youth becoming involved in crime and that the way to address those “roots” of violence is to invest directly in communities where those determinants — poverty, marginalization, a lack of economic opportunities and others — have contributed to making the problem of gun violence so persistent.

The authors of the seminal report the Review of the Roots of Youth Violence, tabled before the province more than a decade ago, identified those specific issues as well as poor community design and the cyclical justice system, as underlying factors.

After reviewing the available research and extensive consultations and study, the authors — former provincial cabinet minister and Speaker of the Ontario legislature Alvin Curling and former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry — concluded that those roots intersect and compound, contributing to the risk of young people who are quick act out in violence or to pull a trigger.

It went on to recommend a sustained plan to invest in communities and directly intervene with youth already at risk, including “stable funding for agencies that serve disadvantaged communities.” It addressed a range of factors from poverty to early learning supports for families and after-school programs for students.

That report was recently raised in a city council debate about increasing the police budget by $4.5 million for the Project Community Space.

Councillor Gord Perks (Ward 4 Parkdale—High Park) referenced the report while questioning senior city staff on what the research said about spending to curb gun violence.

That report, Perks asked, was “probably the most comprehensive piece of work on violence in urban areas ever done in Canada?”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Chris Phibbs, the head of the city division for social development.

“Does it make a single recommendation encouraging that we have more police?” Perks asked.

Phibbs responded: “No.”

Researchers today say that commitment to communities is still lacking.

“I wouldn’t say let’s pull all of the funding for police to deal with issues of crime and disorder that happen on our streets, but we know from the Roots of Youth Violence and other pieces of research and work that a much broader, comprehensive approach is needed, ones that put supports and investments in the communities and individuals,” said Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, University of Toronto sociologist with a specialty in criminology.

That includes the need for sustainable funding, he said.

“The feds might pass money down to the province or municipalities but there’s no kind of overarching structure where there is a constant stream of money flowing to the types of programs that are needed on the ground.”

What is the impact on communities of the way funding is currently distributed?

Programs serving at-risk youth say they are constantly struggling to keep those programs afloat from year-to-year.

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IMPACT’s managing director Soul-R Damon Maraj says their agency has been caught in a cycle where the next source of funding is uncertain and programs were shelved after a few years because the provincial grants aren’t renewed.

IMPACT’s popular Violence Intervention Ambassadors and its Passion for Purpose entrepreneurship program ended after three years, because a stream of provincial funding only carried them that far.

Over its three-year run, the entrepreneurship program trained more than 50 people how to launch businesses, including making covers for mobile devices, auto detailing, repurposing vintage clothing, and catering. Several went on to launch their own startups.

“They were all racialized youth who wanted to find an alternative path out,” Maraj says. “It taught them how to use that hustling spirit to create a product and do it legitimately.

With no steady funding, IMPACT itself has been sustained with support from local businesses. Maraj has been able keep the drop-in and food bank parts going, but says most potential funders don’t want to pay for a drop-in, because “it’s not sexy.”

Howard Moriah, a senior manager, at the Boys and Girls Club of East Scarborough, a few blocks south of IMPACT, has seen programs come and go when funding evaporates. Changes in government after an election can be particularly disruptive, Moriah said, as sources of funding often undergo review or cuts.

“We’re in a cycle of Band-Aids and the more we continue to do that we’re never going to get to the root of why young people are choosing to sell drugs and get involved with gangs,” Moriah says. “Young people come looking for those programs and we have to turn them away.”

Moriah is also concerned recent funding announcements are more reactive than proactive, leading to a patchwork of initiatives lacking sustained impact.

He says in the years following 2005, coined the Year of Gun — when 53 people were killed by guns in Toronto and 178 more injured, according to police data — there was funding galore and agencies were engaging youth in record numbers.

“As soon as things calmed down, slowly the dollars started to dwindle,” he says. “Now, we’re seeing an uptick (in gun crimes) we’re seeing a reinvestment to address the immediate gun issues. Once we have a lull, (funding) will go down again.”

Moriah says interest in bettering communities like Danzig waned, as the media moved on to the next headline.

Jaydin Simpson, 17, was a vocal advocate for the reopening of a community room in his Danzig neighbourhood before he was shot and killed, metres from his doorstep, hours after his graduation this June, Moriah says.

The Boys and Girls Club had enough funding to provide access to computers, food, homework support and recreation to scores of youth at the Danzig community room, before funding shortages forced its closure a few years ago.

The club is working on a drafting a new proposal to revive the Danzig space that it will pitch to the city and community housing officials.

Bill Sinclair, executive director of St. Stephen’s Community House, which runs several programs including a drop-in that became a model for the city’s own youth spaces, says the more preventative a program is, as opposed to engaging youth who have been charged or convicted of crimes — more reactive measures — the less funding is available.

“I think the government sees dealing with the justice system as their responsibility, but still view caring for youth . . . as a responsibility of the family and the neighbourhood,” he says.

He says the lack of funding means some agencies have to charge fees to participants, which places the burden of providing community supports on those who need it most.

Christie Gray, executive director of Sistema Toronto, which offers after-school music programs for at-risk youth in the Jane-Finch, Parkdale and East Scarborough areas, agrees there isn’t sustainable government funding for community programs.

Last summer, their program saw a $500,000 grant promised by the province pulled by Premier Doug Ford’s government.

The city provides no funding to Sistema, despite its reach to 300 youth in priority areas, she says. Gray says she’s heard from officials it’s not that the program doesn’t qualify for grants, but that there “just isn’t enough money to go around.”

“If you’re a politician on a four-year term, you need to show results right now if you want to get re-elected . . . It’s not a good payoff for politicians,” she says.

Investing in an 8-year-old, who while at risk, has not entered into a criminal lifestyle, is a long game, Gray says.

She speaks of an 8-year-old girl in particular who has been coming to one of their programs for two years. That little girl was often angry, lashing out at her peers and teachers.

Staff have been working with her on her violin skills, but also on expressing herself in healthier ways and self-regulation, Gray says.

“You can really see that needle moving for her,” she says. “It is possible that she would have been on a different track.”

What do communities say about balancing policing efforts and neighbourhood supports?

Those working directly with youth as well as researchers say police will always be needed, but the balance and the approach is key.

Cupido, 28, the supervisor of IMPACT’s drop-in program, says police need to rethink their heavy-handed relationship with marginalized youth.

“We spend a lot more on policing, which I also think we need, but in order for things to function successfully you need to have consistency with the youth they police,” he says.

He says police can build bridges by being advocates for a community’s needs, speaking out about the lack of opportunities for youth and rallying with the people they police to make those services a possibility.

“You would have more people in the community who would want to work with you,” he said. “It’s all about approach.”

He also wants police to be able to offer more options for diversion programs, which take in youth who are likely to offend and highlight the risks of their behaviour while connecting them to employment and educational resources.

“If that doesn’t work, then you come down hard,” Cupido says.

Gray, Sistema’s executive director, agreed it’s frustrating to see money funnelled into policing efforts when programs like hers are struggling to have a wider impact.

“The stats are so clear on what the causes for these high crimes rates are,” she said. “There’s such a direct link to poverty and these high-crime-rate neighbourhoods, those are also the neighbourhoods that have the highest rates of poverty and they’re also the neighbourhoods that have the lowest high school graduation rates.”

Without funding the kind of early intervention programs provided to younger kids like the ones Sistema offers, Gray said, policing efforts are a “band-aid solution.”