[URBAN NOTE] "The deadly mixture of guns and class in Toronto"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star recently published a guest editorial by urban student Richard Florida making the point that although Toronto may be less violent than many cities its size, it's violent enough. More, the violence is concentrated in certain neighbourhoods in a very North American pattern.

Just two months into the New Year, four people under the age of 16 have been shot and killed in Greater Toronto. This comes on the heels of a 22-per-cent rise in gun murders last year, when gun deaths surged from 27 in 2011 to 33 in 2012. The rising rate of gun violence is especially disturbing given that gun murders had been declining steadily since 2007.

Torontonians like to think of their city as being safe and relatively free of the violent crime that plagues its American counterparts. It is certainly true that even with the recent uptick, gun murders here pale in comparison to Chicago — a city of similar size to Toronto — where a record 500 people were killed in 2012, 435 in total by gun. Chicago’s rate of 15 gun murders per 100,000 people is 10 times Toronto’s 2012 rate of 1.3 gun murders per 100,000 people. And Toronto’s peak rate of 1.5 gun murders per 100,000 Torontonians back in 2007 seems minuscule in comparison to the rate of roughly 62 gun murders per 100,000 in New Orleans, 35 in Detroit, 25ish in Baltimore and Oakland; and 20ish in Miami, St. Louis and Philadelphia during the same period.

But before we pat ourselves too hard on the back, we need to recognize that Toronto’s gun murder rate is about on par with large U.S. cities like Austin (1.5) and just a little better than San Jose (1.9) or Portland (2.2). And it is not all than much better than New York City’s record low of 3.8 murders per 100,000 recorded last year.

More worrisome, the recent uptick in gun violence in Toronto mirrors the same fault-lines of economic and social disadvantage that exist in U.S. cities.

A detailed New York Times report on gun violence in Chicago showed the stark concentration of murder in the disadvantaged neighbourhoods of the city’s south and west sides, noting that: “Residents living near homicides in the last 12 years were much more likely to be black, earn less money and lack a college degree.” The murder rate was much lower in more affluent, professional and college-educated neighbourhoods such as Lincoln Park and Hyde Park near the University of Chicago, which saw less than one murder per year.

[. . .]

The vast majority of gun murders from 2000 to the present have occurred in the city’s service class areas, and that figure rises to nearly 400 gun murders, almost 90 per cent, when we include the red working class clusters.

The article includes a detailed map showing the location of murders against different Toronto neighbourhoods by socioeconomic class.