It’s sad to say but Thursday’s fatal shooting of a Somali teen in a Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) building on Falstaff Ave. was a tragedy waiting to happen.
Hanad Abdullahi, 16, was found dead in one of the stairwells at 30 Falstaff Ave. around 1 a.m. after police received reports of gunfire. Three males were seen fleeing the scene in a dark-coloured Honda.
Despite the $13 million plunked into community safety measures in this year’s TCHC budget, housing authority officials have been and remain unwilling or incapable of addressing the many security issues in their buildings in a timely or efficient manner.
No matter how many times the rampant epidemic of drugs, gangs and violence is pointed out to TCHC officials, they still appear to be in denial, or worse, simply indifferent about it.
Even the statement TCHC issued Thursday had as much empathy as a stone.
“We are saddened by this senseless act of gun violence and tragic loss of life. Our thoughts are with the victim’s family and loved ones and the entire Jane Falstaff community,” the statement said, noting local staff are working with the city’s crisis response team to connect tenants to trauma-related supports.
The statement is not attributed to CEO Kevin Marshman or chairman Tim Murphy, as it should be in crises like these.
That said, it’s rather rich to claim “sadness” and so on when in April during Marshman’s first meeting as permanent CEO, senior director of the community safety unit, Bill Anderson, was put on the hot seat about his violence reduction strategy — which included the hiring of 60 community safety unit (CSU) officers to send to 10 buildings determined high-risk.
Security cameras were to be upgraded and lighting and building access systems to be improved.
The report had been asked for by council in July of 2018. The funding for the community safety officers had been approved by the board in February of 2019.
Yet at that April 30 meeting, Anderson conceded those CSU officers wouldn’t be fully on board until December and the first 19 ready for training only by mid-May.
There were no targets set either for the installation of cameras or any of the other security measures.
It didn’t escape my attention that none of that would help the peak summer crime season, which we are now in.
That said, TCHC spokesman Bruce Malloch confirmed the Falstaff building is not one of the 10 sites identified for a beefed up security presence under the TCHC’s violence reduction program — whenever it does get off the ground.
He did say — and this is interesting — that the community is patrolled by CSU officers and is the location of the West District CSU office.
If this is the location of a CSU office, should the building not be better protected?
Oh never mind.
Former TCHC tenant board member Catherine Wilkinson, who stated at the April meeting that more “boots on the ground” were sorely needed this summer, said it is a “well-known fact” that crime increases in TCHC buildings in the summer months.
She told me Friday she’s been asking for a long time for “covert cameras” in addition to extra CCTV cameras.
The beauty of covert cameras, she says, are that they are portable, reliable and can be relocated as needed (to such areas as stairwells) to “clean up” high needs buildings and to “capture vandalism and illegal activities before they escalate.”
She adds that such cameras can capture the concrete evidence needed to lay criminal charges and to evict any tenants involved in criminal acts.
“This will go a long way to reducing fear for law-abiding tenants,” she said. “But where there’s no will, there’s no way it’s going to happen.”
Malloch said there will be a community safety meeting Tuesday evening at the Falstaff Community Centre — one that will allow residents to share their concerns and provide input into a community safety plan.
Still, what good is it to share concerns when so little is done?
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