Spike in gun murders in Toronto shouldn't be tolerated

TORONTO - Just in case you are keeping score, there has been a 200% increase in shooting murders since this time last year.

You read it right — 200%.

There’s no spin. No politics. You can check the statistics on the Toronto Police website yourself.

It will show you that by May 3 in 2015, guns were used to kill victims in six homicides. This year, killers armed with guns have so far claimed 18 lives.

That’s a dozen more shooting murders in 2016 compared to the same time frame the year before.

Overall, murders are way up, too — 100% to be precise.

At this time in 2015, Toronto had 14 murders. There have been 28 so far this year.

Of those 28, 13 have not yet resulted in arrests.

So there is a baker’s dozen of murderers out there — and who knows how many of them are looking for revenge. You can help by calling Crime Stoppers.

Either way, the killing and shooting numbers are appalling.

Just a blip?

That was last year’s misleading talking point.

Those hoping it will even out and land at around 60 homicides at year’s end can’t be oblivious to the fact we are on target to match the record 86.

The start of 2005, which was marred by the Summer of the Gun, was only half as deadly as the first four months of 2016.

And the warm weather has yet to hit.

Short of a massive sweep designed to put most gangsters behind bars, it’s looking like one bloody summer. It has been a bloody winter and spring.

Staff-Insp. Greg McLane, the head of Toronto Police’s homicide unit, is clearly concerned.

“Guns are a problem and it’s going to be a bigger problem,” he told reporters Monday.

His team did some excellent sleuthing over the weekend to quickly arrest and charge Harris Nnane, 24, with two counts of first-degree murder in the close-range shooting deaths of Joseph Anzolona, 26, and Cynthia Mullapudi, 24. The allegations against Nnane have not yet been tested in court.

Mullapudi was not the intended target and the only one of the three involved not known to police. She’s the same as Shyanne Charles, Brianna Davy, Jane Creba and Bailey Zaveda, to me.

In the wrong place at the wrong time.

We have had far too many young people murdered by horrible thugs and it amazes me how all of the politically-correct politicians stand for it.

It’s not like they don’t know who most of the problem people are and where they live. Most of the killers have been before the courts in the past.

None of this violence should be tolerated and all means, from soft to hard, should be employed to curb it. All good people should agree to work together to save our young people from being the next record-breaking statistic.

“It’s clear to me that they’re oblivious to being stopped by police,” McLane said of the heartless gang members. “They do not seem too concerned about carrying their guns.”

Get out your calculator.