Rex Murphy: Toronto is having a wretched year. Shootings and killings are at near-record levels. They are open and brazen.
The most recent, and surely one of the saddest, saw a 12-year-old boy being shot during some murderous gang-related idiocy. Of course the police, as they must until absolute proof comes in, have been careful to say that it is not “definitive” that it was “gang-related.”
After this latest horror, Toronto Mayor John Tory declared that it was “totally unacceptable.” What in heaven’s name does he mean by that? What does “unacceptable” possibly mean in this instance? Were any of the previous murders thought by anyone to be “acceptable?”
The mayor is saying nothing. When you’ve hit 425 shootings in a city that’s almost always described as safe, you are long past unacceptable. I think that the mother and her son already knew that and did not need the vaporous reminder from the city’s chief magistrate. What might really help is a new, visible determination, with fresh aggressive policies behind it, to rein in the gangs and give some peace to the most troubled areas of Toronto.
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