Teen criminals play gangster to prove themselves
By JOE WARMINGTON
Last Updated: 18th September 2008, 3:08am
This year in Toronto has been a deadly disgrace.
Disgustingly, many of the dead are 18 or younger -- some as young as 15. Many charged in these homicides are about the same age!
Many are still at large as the street culture refuses to give them up while our rusty old justice system chugs along waiting for the next corpse.
No longer are kids bringing their cigarettes to school. Now they bring guns, knives and their supply of drugs for sale.
Nobody seems too intimidated about the Youth Criminal Justice Act and few line up to explain how it is just about every one of these victims or suspects are before the courts and free to run wild in gangland.
I mean if it were rats killing our kids, we'd find a cure! If it was polio, we'd find a vaccine.
We have had other problems to tackle, people. Have the guts!
The whole thing is sick. But why are so many young people either dying or helping others do that? One reason, my cop sources tell me, is there has been such a dent in the top generals of the criminal street gangs the younger generation of thugs is trying to fill the void.
In other words, the police have been so effective with their high profile target projects, the next generation are left trying to play gangster and control that turf.
"There is no question a lot of the kingpins are behind bars right now," Chief Bill Blair said Tuesday.
Guns and Gangs Projects like Impact, Kryptic, Pathfinder, and Flicker have dismantled a lot of these gangs and put hundreds of them before the courts. Problem is you cut the head off the snake in this culture, 10 more grow all trying to be the leader.
"The older siblings are letting the younger generation carry the guns and run the dope -- realizing their consequences will be less severe," said one copper.
Perhaps a younger, eager and less skilled gangster could explain why there are about 230 shooting victims in Toronto in 2008 while there were about 166 at this time last year. It's difficult to speculate but we do know if not for the Emergency Medical Services' professionals, and the fact that some of these wannabe thugs are bad shots, we might have 200 dead this year.
The list is still long and ugly -- and young.
If it's true the gangs are in disarray and being controlled by teens, now is the time to smash them.
This country has helped win two world wars so please don't tell me they are any kind of formidable threat if we as a group agree to not let them be.
They are punks and that's all. It's embarrassing it has got this bad but to prevent another Jane Creba, it has to be tackled now. No more political correctness and monolithic thinking which doesn't consider ideas from any side of the aisle.
We need an emergency meeting of our politicos. If there were a dozen teenagers killed, or almost, because of bacteria on their luncheon meat you better believe the government and everybody else would be all over it.
With this we need a brain-storming session with ideas like introducing a snitch program that would be as fully funded as the National Gun Registry but would be locating illegal guns. "If such an idea would get 200 guns off the street a year I'd give it a try," one cop told me.
Mayor Miller's routinely dusted off quote about a national handgun ban is not the only thing we can do.
Maybe they could give him that but strengthen it with tougher justice on young offenders, beefed up border patrols and more police officers on the street. Hey, whatever saves lives!
There is not going to be one ideological doctrine that will solve this. All ideas, from right to left, should be tried to see what works best. They would do that if people were dying in a snow storm!
Former Conservative solicitor general and Opposition Leader Bob Runciman made sense to me last night when he said, "it's time for McGuinty and company to start answering how many serious gun-related crimes are committed by thugs on bail? How many unsolved serious crimes are there because witnesses haven't come forward?
"Why don't we expedite the deportation of non-citizens convicted of gang-related crimes?"
He said he wants these answers "instead of publicity stunts like calling for a ban on handguns -- the job is tougher than that and it requires the courage to confront the truth."
Runciman, too. should be in this meeting.
All of these people are on our side. It's kind of easy to see who is on the other. A profile of the enemy? They are young, dumb and often in possession of a gun!
A lot of people are dead because of them and that is disgraceful.
How long we let them call the shots will be up to us!
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