“Don’t let me die. Save me.”
Joshua Yasay
Gangs, gangs, gangs.
City bang bang.
Deaths, deaths, deaths.
The City of Toronto is in shambles.
Not yet. But soon.
Unless the government and the civil society will join hands in battling the fire of violence and creeping deaths which are spreading like wildfire in Ontario’s capital city.
Torontonians still keep their middle and index fingers crossed with the self serving assurance that Toronto is neither Detroit nor Colorado which is another showcase of gun violence in the United States.
If the benchmark of peace and order is by statistics, Toronto is by far safer than other North American cities. But even a single death should be enough to alarm the city bells of Toronto that something is going amiss. That Toronto is having hiccups with peace and order.
The Toronto of old is gone. It is neither here nor there.
Enough is enough.
Every citizen should not sit idly by and wait for the next victim of gun violence to fall and otherwise become a regular spectator of senseless killings gone mad.
The adoption of the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) by the city is a good start and should serve as a warning to gangs that the city is after them. Toronto is taking the bull by the horn.
Hopefully, the city is not offering a band aid solution to the burgeoning gangland of Toronto.
Gangs have been too bold lately in the way they do things with innocent people often caught in the crossfire. Remember the Boxing Day shooting of Jane Creba in 2005 outside Eaton Centre? And the shooting of Ahmed Hassan and Nixon Nirmaledran in Eaton’s food court in last June this year? How about Joshua Yasay and Shayne Charles who were waylaid by wayward bullets in a shoot out between rival gangs in a Scarborough community barbecue lately?
The ax of the city should now fall where it should fall.
And the judiciary should start to bite the bullet and impose harsher penalties on offences which involve any form of violence with the use of firearm or deadly weapon. Bail should not be granted as a matter of course. Let offenders rot in jail without any chance of doing their time in the community.
It doesn’t matter whether the offender is a first timer or a young person.
A first time offender is usually treated lightly and a young person is not given a jail term.
This is the reason why many young persons have the temerity to commit crimes and join gangs. They believe that the judicial system gives them special treatment and the society owes it to them.
There are about 185 active youth gangs in Toronto, Filipinos included.
It is not clear whether the rise in gangs is an offshoot of the government’s policy of multiculturalism. Some argue that poverty, lack of social services or the ghettoization of ethnic communities may be the trigger.
But no amount of rationalization should make Torontonians sit back and wait for the city or federal government to take action. This is a collective effort. Take Toronto back from the thugs.
Before he died, Yasay said “(D)on’t let me die. Save me.”
Torontonians could not afford to hear another young man say this. Don’t let Toronto die. Save it.
(The writer is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and Integrated Bar of the Philippines. He formerly contributed articles for the Peoples’ Journal and its broadsheet, The Courier. The article is a general opinion only and should not be treated as an independent legal advice. Please direct comments to rignaciolaw@gmail.com or contact (905) 597-0963.)