Street checks, a key method of police intelligence gathering in order to combat increasing gang violence, were never supposed to be abandoned permanently.
The Liberal government of then Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne was supposed to introduce a new provincial regulation to govern the practice, but the one it produced in 2017 was so unrealistic — the judge who reviewed it described it as unworkable — that police checks were never revived.
We hear a lot of rhetoric from politicians today about defunding the police, addressing systemic racism in policing and funding long-term social programs to address the root causes of gun violence.
But we hear little — except for predictable lamentations when a particularly horrific shooting occurs — about what they plan to do now to address the steadily increasing gun violence on our streets in the absence of street checks.
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