![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThis post is labeled as a [FORUM] post, but it could as easily be labeled a [NON BLOG] post. Also, the contents reflect somewhat badly on me. If you don't want to read that kind of thing, don't.
* * *
Last Friday, a man identified as Adenir DeOliveira pushed two teenage boys onto the subway tracks at the Dufferin TTC station just as a subway train was coming into the station (Toronto Star, Spacing Toronto, National Post). The two were quite fortunate, one rolling to safety under the overhang of the platform and taking the other with him, the second getting away lightly with a crushed foot. As I read of the incident, learning that DeOliveira had been captured by a TTC conductor outside a Pizza Hut to the south, I found myself wishing that he had resisted arrest. Or, rather, that he "resisted arrest."
Life in Toronto is something I've embraced wholeheartedly; I see it as a spectacular improvement over life on Prince Edward Island. One thing that I've not adapted too that well is violent crime and my feelings about the perpetrators, specifically the presence of violent crime in the city that I've mapped with the TTC and my footsteps. The Dufferin station incident is one of these things. The 2005 Boxing Day shooting at Yonge and Dundas that saw numerous people injured and one person, teenager Jane Creba, shot through the neck and left to moan as she crawled on the sidewalk before she bled to death there, is another. I'd considered going to that area at that time to take a look at HMV's music sales, actually. Perhaps most importantly, there's my January 2007 encounter with a broken bottle-wielding homeless person who, but for a few seconds and maybe a stop at the Scotiabank ATM outside of the Spadina TTC station, might well have come after me (1, 2, 3), and who I followed sleepwalker-like into the station as he waved his weapon. That jolted me; I wish I hadn't experienced that particular state of disjointed consciousness. I really resent him doing that to me. That resentment might explain why, even now, I
wish I'd had the presence of mind as I stupidly followed him to push him down the very tall flight of stairs at Spadina station that lead down to the streetcar level as he was chasing his victim, and, well, let's just say that I certainly recognize the fact that violent and quite possibly mentally ill homeless people don't have very happy or very extended life expectancies.
My reactions to these incidents and their perpetrators are ugly. I'd like to think them uncharacteristic of my reactions in general. So, I ask you, how do you react to violent crime, whether something that occurs in the neighbourhoods that you know or something that occurs in front of you? How do you try to respond, how do you actually respond? I'm quite curious.
Last Friday, a man identified as Adenir DeOliveira pushed two teenage boys onto the subway tracks at the Dufferin TTC station just as a subway train was coming into the station (Toronto Star, Spacing Toronto, National Post). The two were quite fortunate, one rolling to safety under the overhang of the platform and taking the other with him, the second getting away lightly with a crushed foot. As I read of the incident, learning that DeOliveira had been captured by a TTC conductor outside a Pizza Hut to the south, I found myself wishing that he had resisted arrest. Or, rather, that he "resisted arrest."
Life in Toronto is something I've embraced wholeheartedly; I see it as a spectacular improvement over life on Prince Edward Island. One thing that I've not adapted too that well is violent crime and my feelings about the perpetrators, specifically the presence of violent crime in the city that I've mapped with the TTC and my footsteps. The Dufferin station incident is one of these things. The 2005 Boxing Day shooting at Yonge and Dundas that saw numerous people injured and one person, teenager Jane Creba, shot through the neck and left to moan as she crawled on the sidewalk before she bled to death there, is another. I'd considered going to that area at that time to take a look at HMV's music sales, actually. Perhaps most importantly, there's my January 2007 encounter with a broken bottle-wielding homeless person who, but for a few seconds and maybe a stop at the Scotiabank ATM outside of the Spadina TTC station, might well have come after me (1, 2, 3), and who I followed sleepwalker-like into the station as he waved his weapon. That jolted me; I wish I hadn't experienced that particular state of disjointed consciousness. I really resent him doing that to me. That resentment might explain why, even now, I
wish I'd had the presence of mind as I stupidly followed him to push him down the very tall flight of stairs at Spadina station that lead down to the streetcar level as he was chasing his victim, and, well, let's just say that I certainly recognize the fact that violent and quite possibly mentally ill homeless people don't have very happy or very extended life expectancies.
My reactions to these incidents and their perpetrators are ugly. I'd like to think them uncharacteristic of my reactions in general. So, I ask you, how do you react to violent crime, whether something that occurs in the neighbourhoods that you know or something that occurs in front of you? How do you try to respond, how do you actually respond? I'm quite curious.
