Many of you will remember I was a gun violence activist in Toronto between 2007-2012 till I left Canada. Now comes word that shootings have spiked again. Fatal shootings in Toronto have doubled in 2016 compared with last year’s number at this point in the year. But experts caution these early statistics don’t say much about the state of Toronto’s streets.
The total of 13 includes two high-profile overnight shootings in the city: one man killed at Yonge and Bloor Sts. and another at Vanevery St. and Royal York Rd.
At this point in 2015, the city had seen six fatal shootings, while in 2013 and 2014 the number was eight.
This year’s figure represents a 116 per cent increase, but Jooyoung Lee, an expert in gun violence and assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto, said that isn’t as significant as it might look.
Year-to-date numbers are tricky to analyze, he said, because there can be wild variations in shootings in certain months.
“There are some years where there’s a spike in violence in one month, and it makes people panic, and they feel like the violence rate is soaring out of control, but if you look in the last 10 years, the overall numbers for homicides and shootings are fairly consistent,” Lee said.
Data compiled by the Star shows the annual toll of shooting deaths over the past 11 years peaked in 2005, at 52. Since then it’s been steadily decreasing: to 42 in 2007 and 34 in 2012.
These long-term trends are better indicators, according to Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an expert on crime in Toronto and assistant professor of criminal justice at Indiana University.
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