Many of Toronto’s Citizens are in fear because of the apparent increase in violence on their streets, schools, and in the Transit System(SST).
Continual Gangland violence between rival criminal enterprises, with soft victimhood experienced.
Teachers and students were violently threatened, harmed and on occasion murdered.
Predators, often known to the police, harm, and murder apparent innocents.
The psychology of violence seems to be brewing under the peaceful society we see each day. Unexplained incidents such as the murder of a homeless person by several females, some aged 13. A fight for a bottle of booze resulted in a threat, a beating, and murder by kids who should be on their phones worrying about boyfriends, shopping, or whatever. Kids will certainly get a slap on the wrist, and escape into anonymity, their identities protected. A crazed man walks along a road, see’s a well-known journalist, and beats him down. A member of a cult takes his car and drives down many on Toronto’s main street.
You may ask what’s going on? Why this sudden and perpetual insanity, this violent outrage?
First of all, this type of criminality existed previously and has historic significance. Also, what do you expect will happen when those who were hired and elected to protect you are either not able to stop this craziness or are unwilling?
Police Officers cannot approach someone unless acting in an uncommon fashion. Cannot card them, finding out if they are criminals on the run, mentally challenged, or a threat to the rest of us. A police officer has to watch a charged individual go into the system and often be out for days awaiting his or her trial. I do not agree with much that these exceptional people go through, but damn, why would anyone want to be a cop? Oh yeah, the pay and pension plan.
Politicians protect the rights of these criminals, these misunderstood predators, but certainly not victims of the present or future. Throwing a gangbanger into prison for many years needs to be considered, as to their race, creed, social status, income status, whether they suffered historical oppression, etc. Oh yeah, the victim, or gets some medical attention, a pat on the back, and a kind word. If the victim dies the politician has the opportunity to go to the funeral for some time with the paparazzi.
School teachers are attacked daily within our school system, having to deal with students on the spectrum, pushy jocks, drugged-up boys and girls using their parent’s painkillers, and fear the possibility that one of these potential ruffians will show up at school with a knife from their kitchen, or a handgun from the shoe box their dad put on the shelf at home. I taught college kids, and they were unruly, defiant, and sometimes violent, usually towards another student. Teaching kids from the junior to high school range…crazy. The teacher cannot touch, shout at, threaten, or raise their voices to these bubble-wrapped individuals. Teachers and most students want protection.
Hospitals are full of victims and ill people. The victims are often those you have called heroes, the medical health professionals we have depended upon for years now. The ill-tempered, violent patient, ones who suffer from mental illness and dementia can and do lash out against nurses, medics, ambulance drivers, and doctors, not to mention other patients and their families there to support their loved ones. Security within hospitals is kept to the minimum, due to budgets, so violence happens and then life goes on.
What can we do you may ask? There are many answers but one singular one stands out for all to see.
Within each Hospital, School, Transit Station, and community more police are needed. Now those of you calling for reductions in the police budget get a grip. Our population is constantly rising, and so too is our need for cops.
Schools: If a school has more than 750 students two officers should be permanently placed, one female, and one male. Statistics show people prefer to communicate with a female. Smaller schools can have one officer, preferably a female officer, especially when ages of children are lower than in high school. Tasers and clubs are available, and weapons are in a strong box. Again, all you parents who think officers have no better thing to do than threaten your kids, your attitude will change when some asshole comes to the school with a firearm or knife. Possibly having officers teach as well would be preferred and acceptable don’t you think?
Hospitals: Ambulances and medics should be trained in self-defense just in case. All hospitals need permanently stationed officers to protect, manage and assist while maintaining communication with their superiors.
The communities of our city need to have more community-centered policing, with large housing developments giving the police several units so police can live within the community, and be part of the community. Most Toronto Police live outside of the City. Walking patrols are commonsense approaches to community policing.
None of this will happen until some Politician’s Family is threatened, a child raped or assaulted. Politicians live in their own protected world, away from the working man and woman. Their kids are often driven to private schools, and their partners are busy socializing and doing charitable work. Bodyguards and security at the Town hall or their gated communities. Those who legislate, judge, and pontificate care little for the working person. You don’t think so? If they gave a damn, they would have hired hundreds more police officers, changed the parole system, imprison habitual violent criminals, and thrown away the keys. They have not done so. All they do is talk, study the issue, discuss in groups, study some more, and then shelve all information for another day. Do they think this situation will get better soon?
Hey Folks, what about you? Are criminality and violence within our community something we should get used to, and accept as unimpeachably the new standard?
“While an eye for an eye will make us all blind, and yet violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, but we all know that sometimes you need to pick up the gun, only to put it back down”. (Gandhi, Isaac Azimov, and Malcolm X). The police are here to protect us, and sometimes violence is needed to end violence. Hire more cops, and train them well(remind them who their employers are). We need to support those who protect us. It is the way.
Steven Kaszab
438 Simcoe road
Bradford, Ontario L3Z3A1
skaszab@yahoo.ca
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A linebacker at Division II West Virginia State was fatally shot during what the university said Thursday is being investigated by police as a home invasion.
The body of Jyilek Zyiare Harrington, 21, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was found inside an apartment Wednesday night in Charleston, police Lt. Tony Hazelett said in a statement.
Hazelett said several gunshots were fired during a disturbance in a hallway and inside the apartment. The statement said Harrington had multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. Police said they had no information on a possible suspect.
West Virginia State said counselors were available to students and faculty on campus.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with Jyilek’s family as they mourn the loss of this incredible young man,” West Virginia State President Ericke S. Cage said in a letter to students and faculty.
Harrington, a senior, had eight total tackles, including a sack, in a 27-24 win at Barton College last week.
“Jyilek truly embodied what it means to be a student-athlete and was a leader not only on campus but in the community,” West Virginia State Vice President of Intercollegiate Athletics Nate Burton said. “Jyilek was a young man that, during Christmas, would create a GoFundMe to help less fortunate families.”
Burton said donations to a fund established by the athletic department in Harrington’s memory will be distributed to an organization in Charlotte to continue his charity work.
West Virginia State’s home opener against Carson-Newman, originally scheduled for Thursday night, has been rescheduled to Friday, and a private vigil involving both teams was set for Thursday night. Harrington previously attended Carson-Newman, where he made seven tackles in six games last season. He began his college career at Division II Erskine College.
“Carson-Newman joins West Virginia State in mourning the untimely passing of former student-athlete Jyilek Harrington,” Carson-Newman Vice President of Athletics Matt Pope said in a statement. “The Harrington family and the Yellow Jackets’ campus community is in our prayers. News like this is sad to hear anytime, but today it feels worse with two teams who knew him coming together to play.”
DETROIT (AP) — Joe Schmidt, the Hall of Fame linebacker who helped the Detroit Lions win NFL championships in 1953 and 1957 and later coached the team, has died. He was 92.
The Lions said family informed the team Schmidt died Wednesday. A cause of death was not provided.
One of pro football’s first great middle linebackers, Schmidt played his entire NFL career with the Lions from 1953-65. An eight-time All-Pro, he was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1973 and the college football version in 2000.
“Joe likes to say that at one point in his career, he was 6-3, but he had tackled so many fullbacks that it drove his neck into his shoulders and now he is 6-foot,” said the late Lions owner William Clay Ford, Schmidt’s presenter at his Hall of Fame induction in 1973. “At any rate, he was listed at 6-feet and as I say was marginal for that position. There are, however, qualities that certainly scouts or anybody who is drafting a ballplayer cannot measure.”
Born in Pittsburgh, Schmidt played college football in his hometown at Pitt, beginning his stint there as a fullback and guard before coach Len Casanova switched him to linebacker.
“Pitt provided me with the opportunity to do what I’ve wanted to do, and further myself through my athletic abilities,” Schmidt said. “Everything I have stemmed from that opportunity.”
Schmidt dealt with injuries throughout his college career and was drafted by the Lions in the seventh round in 1953. As defenses evolved in that era, Schmidt’s speed, savvy and tackling ability made him a valuable part of some of the franchise’s greatest teams.
Schmidt was elected to the Pro Bowl 10 straight years from 1955-64, and after his arrival, the Lions won the last two of their three NFL titles in the 1950s.
In a 1957 playoff game at San Francisco, the Lions trailed 27-7 in the third quarter before rallying to win 31-27. That was the NFL’s largest comeback in postseason history until Buffalo rallied from a 32-point deficit to beat Houston in 1993.
“We just decided to go after them, blitz them almost every down,” Schmidt recalled. “We had nothing to lose. When you’re up against it, you let both barrels fly.”
Schmidt became an assistant coach after wrapping up his career as a player. He was Detroit’s head coach from 1967-72, going 43-35-7.
Schmidt was part of the NFL’s All-Time Team revealed in 2019 to celebrate the league’s centennial season. Of course, he’d gone into the Hall of Fame 46 years earlier.
Not bad for an undersized seventh-round draft pick.
“It was a dream of mine to play football,” Schmidt told the Detroit Free Press in 2017. “I had so many people tell me that I was too small. That I couldn’t play. I had so many negative people say negative things about me … that it makes you feel good inside. I said, ‘OK, I’ll prove it to you.’”
VICTORIA – British Columbia’s Environment Assessment Office has fined Coastal GasLink Pipeline Ltd. $590,000 for “deficiencies” in the construction of its pipeline crossing the province.
The office says in a statement that 10 administrative penalties have been levied against the company for non-compliance with requirements of its environmental assessment certificate.
It says the fines come after problems with erosion and sediment control measures were identified by enforcement officers along the pipeline route across northern B.C. in April and May 2023.
The office says that the latest financial penalties reflect its escalation of enforcement due to repeated non-compliance of its requirements.
Four previous penalties have been issued for failing to control erosion and sediment valued at almost $800,000, while a fifth fine of $6,000 was handed out for providing false or misleading information.
The office says it prioritized its inspections along the 670-kilometre route by air and ground as a result of the continued concerns, leading to 59 warnings and 13 stop-work orders along the pipeline that has now been completed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
