You Want A Reason For Gun Crime Apathy Lorrie

A partial answer is "we," the people who don't live at "jane & finch," are sick and tired of left wing social in-activists and so called leaders of the black community blaming "whitey" for everything. None of my ancestors were involved in the slave trade, I don't stand in the way of anyone getting an education or getting a job, I get sad when I see a single mother with a small child trying to make ends meet and that sadness is not measured by whether the child is black, brown, white and I never lose sight of the fact the majority of people, whether they live in "poverty" or at the top of the economic pyramid don't commit crimes.

Our dirty secret: Apartheid-lite
Toronto's real attitude on Jane-Finch? Out of sight, out of mind
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, TORONTO SUN

Funny how things change. There was a time when the Sun was condemned by liberal politicians, pundits, activists and academics for not waiting until a shooting victim was buried before making "knee-jerk" calls for tougher laws.

Now the liberals do it, in their own way, as evidenced by the knee-jerk calls from Mayor David Miller and Premier Dalton McGuinty that we "ban" handguns, in the immediate aftermath of last week's fatal shooting of 15-year-old Jordan Manners inside C.W. Jefferys Collegiate. On Friday, Toronto's Police Services Board joined in.

But as veteran Sun police reporter Rob Lamberti has wisely observed, it's not the "hardware" that's the problem. It's the "software" inside someone's head that causes them to gun down a 15-year-old in a school.

And it doesn't matter if Jordan was an angel or troublemaker -- heck, most kids are a bit of both. But no one, and for God's sake no child, deserves to die like that.

As for McGuinty, Miller, et al., let them reflect on one of the two best columns written in Toronto last week following Jordan's death.

The first was by our Queen's Park columnist, Christina Blizzard, and the headline put it perfectly: "Turning murder into politics -- An open letter from McGuinty to the feds pushing for tougher gun laws screams of electioneering." Exactly.

The second was by our education columnist, Moira MacDonald, who wrote nothing will change until we all look at gun violence as "our" problem -- Toronto's problem -- and not just the problem of a few troubled communities like Jane-Finch, where Jordan was murdered.

Nothing will change until those of us who don't live in Jane-Finch identify with Jordan Manners in the same way we did Jane Creba, after she was gunned down in another senseless shooting at Yonge and Dundas on Boxing Day, 2005.

We all felt the murder of that 15-year-old in our hearts, because that was a place any of us, or our kids, could have been. But Jane-Finch? Please. Who goes there? Who lives there, except people who don't have a choice? C'mon. We all know it's true. Race and class still separate "us" from "them." It's Toronto's dirty little secret, our very own "apartheid-lite." We say we feel their pain. We don't.

Of course Prime Minister Stephen Harper is right to push for mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes.

But the fact is our existing sentences are tough enough, if only our judges would apply them.

But they don't and won't. Most judges don't live in Jane-Finch. Most judges are white and affluent, while the people dying are overwhelmingly black and poor. Most judges just don't get it.

Meanwhile, we blame everything -- handguns, no security cameras -- instead of what we should blame: The shooter. And amid all the shouting, we forget what's working.

For example, we have a tough, smart, politically-astute police chief in Bill Blair, who has come up with a strategy -- now that he finally has the flexibility provided by the hiring of 400 more officers -- that appears to be reducing gun crime, centred on dismantling gangs.

And despite its pointless call for a handgun ban, we have a police board with otherwise intelligent people like Hamlin Grange on it, who understand that their job is civilian oversight, not interfering in day-to-day police operations, or implying the force is racist every other week. We weren't always so lucky.

But police can't do this alone. If they are the only representatives of the state people in Jane-Finch and similar communities regularly see, why wouldn't they conclude, wrongly, that they live in a police state?

Where are the rest of us? Why don't we care? Why don't we demand action? Why don't we offer to help?

We wouldn't tolerate this level of carnage in Rosedale, Forest Hill or Moore Park for a day. Why do we tolerate it in Jane-Finch? Most of all, why don't we think of Jordan Manners as our son, in the same way we did Jane Creba as our daughter?