* that we don't have a gangsta problem in Toronto and GTA
* that these gangstas' cultural roots are black, chinese, etc.
* that the majority of the victims are members of their own racial group
Elite Toronto police squad goes looking for trouble
February 08, 2010Moira Welsh
TAVIS, Members of the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy stop, question, and document a man that was picking up pizza from a plaza at Neilson and Sheppard.
“I never did anything wrong,” Dane Brown says as police officers put him in the back of their squad car. “I did nothing! I’m just here to see my baby mother.”
Brown’s indignation grows louder when Sergeant Steve Harrigan arrives to check on his officers, part of the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy. Harrigan leads a TAVIS Rapid Response Team of 16 officers who sweep into areas like Malvern or Jane-Finch, stopping people on the street, in parks, driving cars or in apartment stairwells. They are looking for guns, drugs or information that will lead them to gang-related crime.
Called “targeted policing,” TAVIS is the creation of the provincial government and Toronto police in response to 2005’s “year of the gun,” when gang violence erupted across the city.
Its mandate is to cut crime in high-risk communities across Toronto. One of the ways TAVIS does that is by stopping thousands of people in the targeted neighbourhoods, home to many minorities. This leads to arrests and a growing database of personal information that police gather from a practice called “carding.”
No comments:
Post a Comment