STEPHENSON: Halifax crime: Act from the bottom up
Halifax didn’t get to be a crime capital overnight, so don’t expect a sudden wave-of-the-wand recovery to reduce violence in this city.
If only it were that simple.
Truth is, there are two ways to come at this problem: From the top down, with strong action from the police and the corrections system; and from the bottom up, by building better communities that provide better outcomes for at-risk children.
There will be no shock and no excuses this time around, as the latest Statistics Canada report on annual crime rates showed that Halifax is bucking a national trend that saw the violent crime severity index drop in 2011.
While the index dropped four per cent overall in 2011, compared with the previous year, Halifax saw a jump of six per cent in the index over the same time period. (The violent crime severity index measures all police-reported incidents of some 40 violent crimes, from muggings to murders, but gives more weight to the most serious crimes.)
As for the murder rate, Halifax sits in second place behind Winnipeg. While the average for murders per 100,000 people was 1.7 among Canadian cities, Halifax’s score of 4.4 per cent was more than double that rate.
There were 19 murders in Halifax in 2011 and 75 shootings. So far this year, there have been 39 shootings in the city, including a jaw-dropping three shootings in three days during a spree in May.
There is no suggestion that anybody is in denial anymore about whether or not Halifax has a crime problem, and more specifically a gun problem.
That wasn’t always the case. Just a few years ago, the police were complaining that media reports were fixated on an old Statistics Canada report that labelled Halifax the most violent city in Canada. Erroneously, said the police, compared to some other report or another.
In 2008, city council received a report from Don Clairmont, the sociologist who chaired the city’s Task Force on Violence. Clairmont thundered from the podium that day, blasting away at what he described as “namby-pamby” inaction from council in tackling crime-related problems in city neighbourhoods.
Still, it took a few more years of challenging crime statistics before the all-court press city hall has now applied to the growing gun problem in Halifax.
Fiddling around and comparing the drama of annual murder statistics is a mug’s game. Halifax police told Haligonians Tuesday, in the wake of the new report, that the situation has improved so far this year, with a 30 per cent drop in the homicide rate in 2012. Only seven so far this year.
I was more interested to hear about increased efforts to get guns off the streets, and how police have seized 30 per cent more guns so far in 2012, compared with the first six months of last year.
I have no doubts, through efforts such as the new Integrated Guns and Gangs Unit, and other initiatives they are smart enough not to make public, that the police are doing all they can to get the gun problem under control.
When you have a shooting at the front entrance to a children’s hospital, and another one on a busy street like Quinpool Road, we don’t need a national crime report to tell us this isn’t an American inner-city crime drama on television. This is our very own Halifax reality show.
At the risk of sounding pessimistically dramatic, the prevalence of guns in Halifax also creates the worry that we are only a short step away from the kind of shoot-up that occurred this month in Toronto, where gang violence erupted at a neighbourhood barbecue, with deadly consequences.
As individuals, we can do two things. First, we can pay our taxes, which fund police and corrections programs that work on violence from the top down.
Second, we can take a more active role from the bottom up. Every literacy program, every food bank, every volunteer in a school, in a church, in an addiction or outreach program, helps to build a better option for a child or young adult on the brink of choosing the right path, or the wrong path.
Every brick that offers support to combat poverty and lack of opportunity and employment is a brick worth putting into the community wall that builds our society.
We can stand by and say there is nothing we can do, that it’s all up to the police.
But there is nothing to stop us from choosing to do more from the bottom up.
"From the ground up," but forgot one thing
Submitted by Dak on July 26, 2012 - 7:18am.
The problem does need to be addressed from the ground up, but the ground, in this case, is the home. You can have as many literacy programs, drop-in centres, church and outreach programs you want, but if young people don't get what they need in their homes, the cycle will continue. "It takes a village," is a bit of a myth. What it really takes is a good home which many, sadly, are lacking. It's heartbreaking, really.
Well said
Submitted by Selina on July 26, 2012 - 7:42am.
A further "top-down" step might also examine the success of our war on the drug trade, what appears to be the engine driving much of this violence. Doubling down on a failed policy doesn't appear to make much sense.
Whoops, did I say drug policy and sense in the same sentence?
Waste of time
Submitted by traispealot on July 26, 2012 - 7:49am.
The issue is likely more about drugs than guns. The people with the guns are in the drug trade and the dealers and pushers exist because there is a very ready market for the drugs they sell. You can’t shut down the suppliers of drugs without first shutting down the users of drugs. It's the latter action that we need to focus on. The courts need to get much, much tougher on drug users. A two or three hundred dollar fine for possession is laughably ineffective. A more appropriate penalty would be something akin to the full scope of misery one suffers when convicted of impaired driving.
Going after the gangs and the dealers would make it seem like we’re doing something about the problem, but is really just a waste of time.
Judiciary are the problem
Submitted by Bill Kelley on July 26, 2012 - 7:56am.
The police are doing the best they can in rounding up the lawbreakers, it's the judiciary that are letting the taxpayers down by handing out pathetic sentences, if any at all.
How many times have we read where a scofflaw criminal has been given house arrest, again, while carrying out another crime while released on bail?
I'm more than willing to pay a little more taxes, as long as Dexter isn't involved, to build super-max prisons, hard times prisons with absolutely no creature comforts. TV, Internet, Books, Weight lifting, Gym - yeah right buddy dream on. Chain gangs should be looked at. The YCJA, scrapped and discipline returned in schools.
Excellent, could not have
Submitted by mbrownstraitboard on July 26, 2012 - 10:31am.
Excellent, could not have said it better.
Are police resources being used effectively?
Submitted by Alan on July 26, 2012 - 7:59am.
I don't know about other areas, but we have had a rather remarkable RCMP presence around Fall River during recent years. Weekly (at least)checking for out-of-date license plates does little for the problem of serious crime. Maybe all these traffic checks serve a less obvious purpose, but it seems like all these officers could be spending more of their time doing more important work.
Top-down please. It's time to get tough.
Submitted by shawnino on July 26, 2012 - 8:26am.
Efforts from the "bottom up" aren't going to work because the younger generation has been taught a "no snitching" policy. We need more police presence, and more investigation.
To the comments above, Bill Kelley is the ne who has it right. If our judges would actually enforce the laws instead of bending over backward to accommodate criminals, a lot more of the scum would be taken off the streets.
Alan's got it right: on my last drive into town from Bayers Lake, I passed by three speedtraps. Nice to see the cops trawling for fines when we have unsolved violent crimes. (Ironically, in front of one of the speed traps, a cyclist blew through a red light. The cops, of course did nothing.)
Poverty & Crime (Statistics)
Submitted by CapeHalifax on July 26, 2012 - 8:35am.
Poverty is one of the chief or root causes of crime.
As the disparity between rich and poor incomes grows, so does crime.
Refusing to pay a living wage, and/or keep wages moving with the 'cost of living' index, is in fact attacking the very fabric of the society you hope to plunder for your outrageous executive compensation.
Many Nova Scotia companies practice this insidious tactic robbing employees of just compensation and in the process sowing the seeds of the evils of society they claim to detest.
Once poverty sets in, it becomes the target for government agencies who see it as a mechanism of disenfranchisement leaving those citizens vulnerable to less than civil response from the their police and elected government representatives.
Crime stats have less to do with the 'Lord' Blacks than they do with the Joe or Josey Smith holding down two jobs just to try and make ends meet while the presidents of their company/university earn $400,000.00 and low interest loans and accommodations while on the job ...
We can address crime by closely watching the activities of our police towards the poor, the response of elected legislators to attempts to cut or curtail social programs like EI and access to housing mortgages, and so much more.
Vigilance is our priority - Equitable societies don't happen without much effort.
No Justice, No Peace.
Really Cape?
Submitted by BSacamano on July 26, 2012 - 10:36am.
Income disparity, eh?
Then how come crime rates skyrocketed in the 1960s and 70s? In those heady days of P.E.T.'s just society, the income gap was a fraction of what it is today. Yet the crime rate more than tripled between 1962 and 1977.
And if it's all about poverty, how come the crime rate peaked in 1991, when the income gap was still less than it is today? Why has it declined as incomes have gotten less fair?
Could it possibly be that liberal 1960s justice reforms, combined with the collective age of the baby boomers and the destruction of traditional values, has more to do with crime rates than income disparity?
well...
Submitted by henry gondorf on July 26, 2012 - 9:00am.
good comments except for Bill Kelley....that route doesn't work..in fact it makes things worse...you're operating on the premise that kids look at sentences as a deterrent ..they do not... sentences are important, but what is more important is what you do during incarceration , and that society intervene in the areas that create an prevalence to criminal behavior...the home, as someone said, early school identification of mental health stresses, appropriate treatment etc..
Poverty does NOT cause
Submitted by zoda on July 26, 2012 - 10:08am.
Poverty does NOT cause crime...& there is very little poverty anymore,,lots of safety nets..& every ''poor'' person I see has a cell phone. No one is starving.The Depression era didnt have crime like this.so stop the blathering about ''economic justice'' 15 yr old girls having babies & being rewarded for it by the welfare system..raising them almost like feral animals as they know no better..stir & repeat.
Guns or People?
Submitted by dennis.cato on July 26, 2012 - 10:05am.
"Every brick that offers support to combat poverty and lack of opportunity and employment is a brick worth putting into the community wall that builds our society." (Marilla Stephenson)
Well, there you go. It's all about lack of opportunity and employment and once we get those two bricks into the wall, it will be smooth sailing. But will it?
Using Marilla's own numbers we find that while in 2011 there were only 19 murders and 39 shootings in Halifax, this year - we're only half-way through - there were 39 shootings already including a "jaw-dropping" three shootings in three days in a spree in May. (Marilla doesn't give the murder numbers but one supposes the proportion to shootings holds.) Anyway, Halifax is right up there in the violent crime index, just behind Winnipeg.
But Marilla is more interested, so she writes, in "getting guns off the street." Okay, the police have seized 30% more guns so far in 2012 compared with the first six months of 2011. It looks good in terms of the guns off the streets but how to explain the rise in Halifax's violent crime index? There seems to be a disconnect between the number of guns off the street and the increasing number of violent crimes. How does Marilla resolve the dilemma?
Well, we've got to start putting those bricks into the wall. But if the two trends - the decline in the number of guns and the rise in the violent crimes - mean anything, those bricks are irrelevant. The perpetrators, in other words, are not interested in opportunity and employment. They don't subscribe to our cultural norms. They come out of a different cultural context, if you want to call it that. They value "street cred" rather than opportunity and employment. They are, in brief, narcissistic murdering peacocks. So where do we go from here?
Marilla, it's over to you. Maybe you have some other bricks lying around.
Of course it's not all up to
Submitted by Demosthenes on July 26, 2012 - 11:01am.
Of course it's not all up to police, I couldn't agree with you more. The police are a reactionary force - absolutely they try to act in a proactive manner when possible (amidst the public shouts of "police state!" and "thought crime!" no less), as well they should, but police themselves are never going to going to be able to be the be-all and end-all of crime stoppage. That falls to the judiciary, and to a greater extent to the communities themselves.
Further, we need our politicians and police officials to stop blowing smoke, to stop telling everyone that things are fine, crime is down, all is well. I'm not saying we need hysteria, but we as citizens deserve to be told the truth about what is going on in our community. I am sick to death of the lies, and I'm glad that at least one of the mayoral candidates is being honest with us about the mess we are in, crime-wise.
PROBLEM IS THE LACK OF PUNISHMENT
Submitted by bearpaw on July 26, 2012 - 11:22am.
BILL KELLY, has it right. JUDGES/ LEGAL SYSTEM are the problem. Stop the slap on the wrist. Give real sentences. The police do their job, and expect proper sentences. Lo and behold, the guy is out and committing another crime. Crime after crime after crime, are committed by the very same persons. When they break probation, they are given probation again. There are probably only 100 persons in all of Nova Scotia, that continually give the police, real trouble. They know the ones. Get those 100 off the street, and you would have enough police. The criminals, in jail, have never had it so good. Why wouldn't they want to come back. Big screen TV. Exercise equipment. Heat and air supplied. Make them work. Cut roadside bushes. Paint Municipal buildings. Sweep town streets, in PINK coveralls. Mow cemetaries. At least, while in custody, they aren't committing as many crimes. Recently heard about a guy, on his 193rd DUI, killing someone. All those judges, involved in his 193 convictions, should be in jail, with him.