By Dawar Naeem
(Dawar is a journalist with the Focus Media Arts Centre)

On Thursday December 2, 2021, Toronto Metropolitan Police officers from 51 Division and the Toronto Metropolitan Police Youth Engagement Unit hosted a presentation and dialogue session about guns and gang violence with Regent Park youth. The meeting was held at the Regent Park Community Centre located at 403 Shuter Street and was facilitated by Isabelle Cotton, a Police Youth Engagement Officer. Cotton was assisted by her colleagues including 43 Division Superintendent Dave Rydzik; 51 Division Unit Commander Chris Kirkpatrick; 51 Division 2nd in charge Inspector Angadvir Singh; and Regent Park Neighborhood Police Officers Farzad Ghotbi and Mustafa Popalzai.

The session was targeted at Regent Park youth and included a small number of adult community members.

The main purpose of the session was to introduce Project#Engage416, a new pilot project of the Toronto Police Service’s Gang Prevention Strategy that focuses on implementing appropriate education, prevention, intervention, and suppression strategies and initiatives focused on the reduction of guns and gangs, sexual violence and harassment, and human trafficking.

The project has five core strategies: 1. Community mobilization, 2. Opportunities provision, 3. Social intervention, 4. Suppression, 5. Organizational change and development.

Because it is a pilot project, Engaged416 is only focused on 12 division, 23 division, 31 division which are the highest concentration of divisions experiencing gun violence in the City of Toronto. Depending on the success of the project, Toronto Police Services hopes to extend the project city wide including to the downtown communities of Regent Park, Moss Park and St. Jamestown which are located in 51 Division.

The objective in presenting the project to Regent Park youth at the December 2nd meeting was to hear youth opinions about project and about their safety concerns in the community.

Much of the feedback provided to the police by youth and community members revolved around systemic racism and how police can be stronger allies in working with the community to access supports to young people such as education, jobs and grant opportunities.   

One member of the youth community took the opportunity to share his thoughts by saying: “When a shooting happens in Regent Park, do you think John Tory comes down here, does a fundraiser, goes on a camera and says,….this shooting shouldn’t be happening here? When there was a shooting in Danforth, he (John Tory) did the biggest fundraiser in the community of Danforth, he went on TV and said,…these shouldn’t be happening…so where should it be happening, in Regent Park? When you want to address certain things, you go straight to the source, go straight to John Tory and tell him why don’t you do that in Regent Park or Jane and Finch, in predominantly black neighborhoods where black lives don’t matter. That’s what black people are seeing in the community, that John Tory is not caring about black people, Doug Ford doesn’t care about black people. If you’re saying that you guys are going to correct the wrong, and you want us to open up to you, so correct the wrong, how many wrongs have to be done before something is corrected? How many people have to lose their lives before something is corrected? How many times do we have to feel like that we are hopeless because of our skin color and the way society judges us?” The youth questioned.

At the meeting Toronto police indicated their willingness to continue these conversations in future meetings and to amplify the community’s voice to access resources.