TORONTO NEEDS AN ANTI-GANG SQUAD

Baltimore is a police chief's nightmare. A small city, with a
population of 650,000, it registered 268 homicides in 2005, 213
committed with a gun. Amazingly, those figures represented an
improvement for the Maryland city. Six years ago, there were 305 homicides.

The drop in murders can be attributed to an innovation by the city's
mayor, Martin O'Malley, according to a report in the Toronto Star.
O'Malley brought in a computer program that gave police accurate,
detailed information about crime patterns in the city.

The program allowed police to learn that, in 2004, 90 per cent of
murder suspects had criminal records, mainly related to illegal drugs,
and 87 per cent of those shot also had drug-related criminal records.
In other words, Baltimore was in the midst of a drug war.

Sensibly, Baltimore police reacted by setting up an organized crime
unit. It is staffed by 200 officers and its target is the city's drug
gangs.

Montreal in the 1990s faced a similar situation when the biker gangs
were waging a full-out war over the illegal drug trade. Police in
Montreal for years had ignored the mayhem under their noses. More than
160 people were killed in the drug wars and for too long police were
inclined to view the deaths as a "settling of accounts."

It was not until Aug. 9, 1995, when 11-year-old Daniel Desrochers was
killed by debris from a car bomb, that police reacted. That same week,
an anti-gang squad was formed. Within a month of the boy's death,
Montreal police combined forces with the Surete du Quebec.

Toronto today seems to be in the same situation as Baltimore was six
years ago and Montreal was a decade ago. It looks as though it is in
the throes of a gang drug war. Unfortunately, its police force hasn't
done enough investigative work to say with certainty that that is the
case. But the facts are likely there to be uncovered when they get
around to doing the work.

Equally unfortunate, all the things that the city's political and
community leaders have decided to worry about are peripheral to the
main problem. The presence of guns, mostly of U.S. provenance, and the
boldness of the gangs are incidental to the central, and urgent, need
to put in operation a dedicated, anti-gang police unit.

Despite the record number of killings committed with guns in Toronto
last year, the city is nowhere near to laying claim to the sad
distinction of being Canada's murder capital. That still belongs to
Winnipeg, with 4.9 murders per 100,000 residents. Edmonton, at 3.4,
Regina with 2.86 and Vancouver at 2.6, all had higher homicide rates
in 2004 than Toronto's 1.8. (Montreal in 2004 had a per-capita murder
rate of 1.73. It will be even lower for 2005, after the number of
homicides dropped from 42 in 2004 to 35 in 2005.)

With a federal election campaign in full swing, leaders are busy
trying to appeal to voters who want more social programs or more gun
control or tougher legislation. But the truth of the matter is that
what is needed is more public spending in the form of more and
properly equipped police officers - starting with Baltimore's computer
program.