Gun and Gang Violence in Toronto

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Richmond Hill Terrorist and National Security

Watch Faith Goldy deliver the news that the Canadian Media outlets and the MSM refuses to report on. Thank you Faith. Canada loves you.

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Toronto's Gun Buyback Screwup

Toronto Police put the safety of a local resident in jeopardy when they tried to brag about the success of their gun buyback program online.

In a tweet posted by Constable Mehrdad Sayedzadeh, the Community Response Officer at 54 Division, a pile of guns was profiled in a photo, complete with identifying information on who turned them in.

“This thing stinks,” said one of the people whose name and contact information was visible.

“It’s f^&*ing unbelievable,” he said when reached by phone.

The gun buyback program was announced on April 26 by Mayor John Tory and Police Chief Mark Saunders.

A now-deleted Tweet posted by a Toronto Police officer on Tuesday clearly showed personal information of participants in the city’s gun buy-back program. The Toronto Sun has obscured the personal information revealed in the photo.I said at the time that the program was unlikely to get guns out of the hands of gangsters and so far, that appears to be the case.

In the photos tweeted out by Const. Sayedzadeh, a series or hunting rifles and shotguns are seen laid out on the floor along with a group of pistols on a table.

Foolishly, the property tags containing key personal information were not removed, blocked out or otherwise made unreadable.

“That is putting it mildly,” said the man at the end of the phone when asked if he is pissed off at the cops for putting out his personal information.

Once made aware of the tweet, TPS deleted it and apologized.

“We regret the error and the concern it has caused for the individual. The tweet was removed immediately upon notice. We will review this occurrence and take steps to avoid similar issues in the future,” said spokesperson Allison MacNeil Sparkes.

Is that enough for exposing the personal info of someone that turned in guns?

They could now be the target of thieves looking for more guns.

This is inexcusable.

Beyond putting out personal data that the police should be charged with protecting, it appears that the Toronto Police Service is also overpaying in its gun buyback program.

“What I see from that picture is someone that figured they could get $350 instead of $50-$150,” said Mark Morelli.

Morelli is a retired Hamilton police officer and an avid gun collector.

As the man behind The Canadian Gun Vault, Morelli is familiar with the prices that the guns in the photos would get on the open market.

While TPS would love to pat itself on the back for getting pistols “off the street,” Morelli insists they overpaid for guns that had nowhere else to go.

“This is obviously part of a collection. They are all of the same type and prohibited,” Morelli said in an interview.

Some collectors who were licensed and legally-owned certain types of guns prior to the Liberal gun control legislation enacted in 1995 were grandfathered and allowed to keep those guns.

But since they can only sell to similarly licenced people, Morelli said the market is diminishing and most of the pistols in the photo would fetch between $50 and $150 if sold to another collector.

“He’s getting $350 for guns with diminishing value,” Morelli said.

Gun buyback programs like this are mostly about giving police a chance to grandstand and say they are doing something to get guns off the streets.

They rarely, if ever, actually get crime guns off the streets and instead collect old plinkers and guns from collectors.

Now they’ve gone a step further, they have not only overpaid, they are putting people’s safety on the line.

Someone needs to be held to account over this.

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Surviving Toronto in a MAGA Hat with David Menzies

David Menzies of TheRebel.media reports: Talk the brave and the bold: in liberal Toronto near Yonge-Dundas Square, we came across Amaury donning a Make America Great Again cap.

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How guns get across the Canadian border.

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Toronto star Publisher Torstar continues to Lose Money

Torstar Corp. saw a 50 per cent rise in paid digital subscriptions in the first quarter, as the company which owns the Toronto Star continues to build its digital-first strategy with offerings including a partnership with tech giant Apple.

The Toronto-based media company, which owns several daily and more than 80 weekly newspapers, as well as shares in a number of digital-only properties, had a net loss in the first quarter of $7.4 million (9 cents per share), up from a loss of $14.5 million (18 cents per share) in the same period of 2018. The first-quarter results also included a one-time gain of $18 million in digital media tax credits.

“We continued to make good progress on our journey towards a digital future that combines the power of data with our deep roots in journalism to develop new and growing digital subscription and advertising revenue streams,” said John Boynton, president and CEO of Torstar, and publisher of the Toronto Star.

During the first quarter, Torstar entered into a partnership with Apple which will see Star content made available on Apple News +, Apple’s new paid subscription service which launched in late March. The Star receives a share of Apple News + subscription revenue, and can also sell ads to be paired with Star content on the service.

The company also said it ended the quarter with over 15,000 digital-only paid subscribers on thestar.com, up from almost 10,000 at the end of 2018.

In 2018, Torstar began a major national expansion of its Metro urban commuter newspapers, providing enhanced original news content to customers in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Halifax.

That content is among the offerings now available on thestar.com. Content of thestar.com has been further strengthened with Torstar’s 2018 acquisition of iPolitics, an Ottawa-based specialized provider of in-depth coverage of federal and provincial politics and policy developments.

The company saw $22 million in print advertising revenue for its daily papers in the first quarter, down from $29 million a year ago, while print advertising in its community papers fell to $19 million from $22.8 million. Subscription revenue across the company rose slightly to $29.6 million from $29.5.

“We remain pleased with the performance of our subscriber revenue and flyer distribution revenue which represent a significant portion of our revenue base ... These categories are a source of strength for us as we focus our efforts on growing new digital revenue streams while managing declines in print advertising,” Boynton said.

Torstar ended the quarter with $52 million in cash and cash equivalents, and has no debt.
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Two Toronto men hurt as gunfire erupts near Jane and Sheppard

Two men were injured in shootings hours apart in the same North York neighbourhood Wednesday night.

And Toronto Police say they have not ruled out the possibility of a link between the gun violence.

“The same team of 31 Division officers is investigating both shootings,” Const. Caroline de Kloet said Thursday, explaining it’s too early to know if the incidents are connected but detectives will look at all possible scenarios and go where the evidence leads.

She said gunshots initially rang out near Sheppard Ave. W. and Magellan Dr., just east of Jane St., around 8 p.m.

Officers found a man, believed to be in his 20s, outside an apartment building suffering from a gunshot wound.
  
The victim was taken to hospital but his injuries are not considered life-threatening, de Kloet said.

Hours later, around midnight, gunfire erupted again at a townhouse complex near Grandravine Dr. and Arleta Ave. — about a kilometre north of the first shooting.

The shooter fired repeatedly through a window of a townhouse unit and a man, possibly in his 40s, was hit multiple times.

“The victim was inside his home at the time,” de Kloet said. “And there were bullet holes visible in a glass window.”

The man was “conscious and breathing” when rushed to hospital and his injuries are also not believed to be life-threatening.

Investigators are reviewing security video but no suspect descriptions were immediately released for either shooting.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 416-808-3100 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).
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Heysham Baity, 28, of Toronto, and Dominique Mossel, 28, of London, Ont., arrested on gun and drug charges.

Toronto Police seized a loaded semi-automatic assault-style rifle along with two semi-automatic handguns on Sunday.

Officers in 31 Division searched two addresses and a vehicle associated with a 28-year-old man.

Police say that at one of the addresses, they found and arrested two men — one of whom they say gave false identification.

A 22-calibre Mossberg Assault style rifle allegedly seized during a Toronto Police investigation April 14, 2019.

It turns out that man was wanted on multiple arrest warrants from police in London, Ont.

Along with the guns and ammunition, police say they also found large quantities of cocaine and fentanyl.

Heysham Baity, 28, of Toronto, and Dominique Mossel, 28, of London, Ont., are facing a combined total of 45 charges.
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Canada Gun Control Facts

According to Statistics Canada, back in 1991 about 1,100 Canadians killed themselves by hanging. Another 1,000 shot themselves dead.

By 2018, about 2,000 hanged themselves, while fewer than 600 committed suicide by firearm.

But despite the fact that hanging deaths have doubled and firearms suicides have fallen by almost half, you never hear anyone call for twine control or a long-rope registry. The “experts” and politicians who push for greater gun control (and who claim their only motive is public safety), seem to have very little interest in facts.

Most years, in the whole country, there are between 150 and 200 murders committed with guns and knives. Some years, guns slightly exceed knives as the murder weapon of choice. Most years stabbing murders are more numerous.

Yet you never hear a Liberal politician demand every home chef be forced to hand over his or her paring knives and potato peelers.

Still, federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, Bill Blair, the minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continue to hint at a ban on handguns and further restrictions on rifles and shotguns before this fall’s general election.

(I actually think the SNC-Lavalin scandal has made some new form of legislated gun control more likely. The allegations that the Trudeau government may have attempted to subvert Canada’s criminal justice system have begun to eat into core Liberal support. What better way to re-energize the Liberal base than to whip up the “progressive” passion for disarming law-abiding citizens.)

But to justify singling out law-abiding gun owners as the prime target of its anti-crime strategy, a government has to be able to blame legit owners somehow.

“Aha!,” the Liberal lights pop on. “We’ll claim law-abiding gun owners are now the No. 1 source for crime guns in Canada!”

And that is just what the governing party has been doing since the tragic shootings in Toronto’s trendy Danforth neighbourhood last summer – insisting that legit owners are really gun traffickers in disguise.

It’s true that in one year, three years ago, Toronto Police seized more than 500 firearms. The geographic origins of nearly two-thirds could not be determined. However, Toronto Police claimed that of the 200 or so they could pinpoint, the sources where divided roughly equally between the States and Canada.

But that was one year. In one city.

Ottawa police estimate nearly 80% of crime guns in the capital are foreign-sourced. And Hamilton police say smuggled firearms constitute three-quarters of their city’s crime guns.

Still, Liberal ministers persist in the myth that there are 1,200 break-ins every year in Canada to steal firearms, even though StatsCan’s database shows just five “robberies to steal firearms” in 2013, 16 in 2014, 12 in 2015 and 18 each in of 2016 and 2017.

Despite repeated claims by leading Liberals and anti-gun activists, the vast majority of crime guns in Canada are almost certainly not bought legally by a licensed owner here, then lost or sold on the black market.

Moreover, firearms researcher Dennis Young, himself an ex-Mountie, has filed numerous access-to-info requests with the federal government. Young has managed to pry out the fact that neither the RCMP nor StatsCan have ever compiled statistics on the sources of crime guns.

The RCMP admitted to Young they don’t even have a definition of what constitutes a “crime gun.”

Just as the Liberals pushed former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to rig the SNC case for partisan Liberal ends, they seem to be making stuff up about legit gun owners for partisan purposes, too.

It’s as simple and cynical as that.


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Toronto TTC collected over 40,000 records on riders who weren’t charged with an offence

For years, the TTC has been quietly maintaining a database that includes thousands of records detailing personal information collected from transit riders who weren’t formally charged with any offence — records it keeps for 20 years and, at times, will share with police.

In the course of their daily duties, the agency’s fare inspectors and enforcement officers stop people on the transit system who, the TTC says, they believe have committed fare evasion or other offences. If the officers decide not to issue the person a ticket, they can record sensitive information such as the person’s name, address, driver’s licence number, physical appearance and race on “field information” cards, and then enter those details into a database that transit officers access daily but which most transit users aren’t even aware exists.

Data obtained through a freedom of information request shows that TTC officers filled out more than 40,000 of the cards between 2008 and the end of 2018. Once a rider’s information is in the system, the TTC says city bylaws dictate the agency must retain it for 20 years.

TTC officers recorded the race of the person they stopped on about three-quarters of the cards. An analysis of that information performed by the Star suggests a disproportionately high number of cards, 19.3 per cent, were filled out for interactions with Black people. Black residents make up about 8.9 per cent of Toronto’s population.

Civil rights experts say the practice sounds a lot like carding, the controversial tactic police have historically used to collect citizens’ personal information, and warn it could amount to racial profiling and a widespread invasion of privacy.

The TTC and the union that represents the officers firmly reject that characterization. Transit agency spokesperson Stuart Green said officers will use the form “as a formal caution in lieu of charges,” and will only fill one out if he or she has “reasonable and probable grounds that an offence has been committed and then uses their discretion to caution rather than lay a charge.”

Green said the purpose of the database is “to assist (the TTC enforcement unit) in its daily functions.” For instance, TTC officers can check the database to determine whether someone they’ve stopped for suspected fare evasion or another offence has been stopped before, which helps determine if they should receive a ticket or merely a warning.

Green said the TTC is not engaged in any form of carding.

“We do not random stop customers and investigate them,” Green said, and Black riders are “absolutely not” targeted, intentionally or otherwise.

Jake Mahoney, secretary of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 5089, which represents TTC officers, also strongly rejected the idea its members are performing discriminatory carding.

He said the field information cards are “a useful investigative tool” that officers only use “in a scenario where we observe an offence committed.”

“The union members that are out there doing this job, they don’t have any control over the race of the person,” he said. “I go back to the fact that everyone we stop and talk to, we have a legal authority to do so.”

Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s equality program, said the database raises serious concerns about racial profiling and privacy.

“Any database that’s retaining information about people for no justified reason could be seen as carding. And where there’s a disproportionality of personal information being stored unjustifiably about racialized and marginalized people (that) certainly sounds like carding to me,” she said.

According to Mendelsohn Aviv, while the TTC is entitled to enforce its fare policies, there’s no justification for collecting and storing a rider’s personal information if they haven’t been issued a ticket.

“For a $3 fare, to record somebody’s personal information seems completely out of proportion,” she said.

She described the 20-year period for which the TTC retains the information as “outrageous.”

“The very fact of it being obtained, and then the added problem of it being retained, is certainly a violation of privacy,” she said.

The TTC database isn’t secret. But nor is it widely known to the public. The transit agency publishes voluminous data about its operations, but regular reports about how it’s collecting information from people on the transit system are not among them.

Even those riders who provide their information to TTC officers can be unaware of where it goes or how it could be used.

Although the TTC says the cards are used to issue warnings to people suspected of breaking the rules on the transit system, the person receiving the caution isn’t given a copy of the card, meaning they have no official record of the interaction and no easy way to identify the officer involved.

The TTC says officers aren’t required to provide a copy because a caution isn’t a formal charge, and that transit users can request information the agency may have on them by filing a freedom of information request.

Septembre Anderson was on her way home one sweltering evening in July 2016 when she was pulled off a streetcar by a fare inspector for not paying for her ride.

Anderson says she had a TTC token in her hand at the time, but she boarded the car by the back doors and it was too crowded for her to get to the fare box at the front.

Anderson, who is now 36 and works as a front-end web developer, recalls that the officer was going to her a ticket for fare evasion, but decided to let her off with a warning instead.

To her surprise, she says he began asking her for personal details, such as her name, address and health card number. She asked what he would do with that information, and reacted with concern when he told her it would be put into a database.

“I wanted to know why my information was being put in a database if I wasn’t actually being given the ticket. How do I remove it from the database? Where does that information go?” she said.

“There was no information given to me at all about my rights, or what my personal information was being used for.”

She didn’t want to give her information, but says she did because she felt she had no choice. “He was just like, ‘well ma’am you can get a ticket instead,’” she says.

To Anderson, who is Black, the experience felt like a form of carding.

“If he was giving me a warning, he just could have given me a verbal warning ... If someone can stop and detain somebody and collect their personal information, yes that falls under carding,” she said.

Legal experts who spoke to the Star said the law can be unclear on what information officers, including those working for the TTC, can request from citizens.

Mendelsohn Aviv of the CCLA said she believed that officers shouldn’t ask for a person’s name unless “at a minimum” they’ve witnessed the person committing an offence.

Green, the TTC spokesperson, said that “depending on what (transit users) are being investigated for, they do have a legal obligation to identify themselves.”

There are two types of TTC officers who interact with the public on the transit system: fare inspectors and enforcement officers. Inspectors are tasked with ensuring riders pay the proper fare, while enforcement officers patrol the system for security purposes. Neither are full-fledged police officers, but transit enforcement officers have been designated special constables under an agreement with the Toronto Police Services Board and have limited police powers on the network.

Both inspectors and enforcement officers can fill out field information cards about members of the public.

For years, TTC officers used the same Toronto Police Service “208” forms to collect information about people on the transit system that police used for their street checks, before switching to their own “718” forms that were identical in many ways.

The Star obtained nearly 11 years worth of data the TTC recorded on the cards, which is not the complete set of records the transit agency has on file. The data didn’t include entries for people who were ticketed for an offence on the transit system, which the transit agency keeps in the same database. The data provided to the Star was also redacted to remove any information that could risk identifying an individual.

It showed that between January 2008 and December 2018, the TTC enforcement unit filled out 41,833 of the cards. Officers recorded the race of the person they stopped roughly 33,000 times, or in about three quarters of the interactions.

Of the cards on which the person’s race was recorded, 19.3 per cent were identified as Black.

Black residents make up only about 8.9 per cent of Toronto’s population, according to the 2016 Census. And while the TTC says it doesn’t have data indicating the racial makeup of its ridership, the census shows Black people constitute just 10.7 per cent of those in Toronto who commute by public transit. That figure doesn’t include trips for noncommuting purposes, and does include journeys on other transit agencies such as GO.

The proportion of card entries that Black transit users accounted for varied from year to year, and generally trended downward over the 11-year period. The figure was highest in 2011 when it reached about 27 per cent, and by 2018 had fallen to about 16 per cent.

Black residents’ personal information was more likely to be recorded if they were young and male. Males between the ages of 15 and 25 made up about 35 per cent of all Black people whose information was recorded on the cards. Males of the same age made up roughly 24 per cent of white residents recorded on the cards.

Green, the TTC spokesperson, said that in many cases the person’s race recorded on the card is based on officers’ observations.

“So if a person does not offer a race association, the officer will use best judgment,” he said.

Green couldn’t say why Black people appear to be disproportionately represented on the cards. “However, the TTC’s customer base is wider than just Toronto residents and almost half of Toronto residents identify as racialized,” he said.

He said the transit agency “is fully committed to treating all customers equally and without prejudice,” and officers receive training on diversity, inclusion and preventing discrimination.

Green acknowledged that the TTC sometimes shares information collected on the cards with police. He couldn’t say how often that had happened between 2008 and 2018, but said police “rarely” request the information and the TTC would only provide it if served a court order.

Nigel Barriffe, president of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, said the TTC data is “very representative of what we saw with carding and the police,” and shows Toronto’s public institutions “are constantly pushing away our young Black males in our society and making them feel as if they don’t belong in our city.”

He said if Black people are being stopped by TTC officers at higher rates than other groups, it sends the message to Black residents that they have no place in public spaces like the transit system.

“It’s like you have to think twice if you’re a Black male taking public transit in this city,” he said.

He called for the TTC to improve its anti-bias training and make hiring decisions to ensure its enforcement unit reflects Toronto’s diversity.

Some people who used to work for the agency’s enforcement unit say they were uncomfortable with the use of the field information cards.

A former member of the TTC’s transit enforcement unit contacted the media to raise concerns about the database after a newspaper published unrelated allegations of misconduct by transit officers.

The former officer, who agreed to discuss the issue on the condition of anonymity out of concern for future employment prospects, said there were “no checks and balances” on the use of the database and he believed riders should be made aware of it.

“There’s no real oversight really,” he said, adding he was concerned the TTC’s practice was akin to police carding.

Ann Cavoukian, who was formerly Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner between 2007 and 2014, said the TTC should consider suspending the collection of riders’ personal information, or at least provide the public and riders with more information about their rights and how the agency is using the data.

“In my view, I think they should stop collecting this information. At the very least, if they must continue collecting it, they should start by giving notice, clear transparency about what they’re doing, how long they’re going to retain the data, and in what form,” she said.

“I’m just really disturbed by this ... I had no idea they had a database or they keep this information.”

The Star’s investigation into the database follows separate incidents that have raised concerns about the TTC enforcement unit’s conduct related to issues of privacy and alleged racial profiling.

A 2018 TTC report determined a fare inspector had used information he collected from a female rider to contact her later and ask her on a date, an incident that caused the woman to “fear for her safety.” The inspector kept his job.

The TTC is also being sued by a young Black man who was pushed and pinned down by transit officers as he exited a streetcar in February 2018, in what he alleges was a case of racial profiling. The allegations haven’t been proven in court.

In part as a result of the questions about the database, the TTC said it is reviewing the forms and how officers used them.

However, at a TTC board meeting last month agency officials said they planned to make greater use of the database to help get a handle on the network’s costly fare evasion problem, which the city auditor general recently reported cost the TTC $61 million in foregone revenue last year.

The agency is also hiring an additional 45 fare inspectors and 22 enforcement officers this year, bringing their total complement to 186 officers and meaning interactions between officers and riders will likely become more frequent. 
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