Ever since someone in my family was shot on the street in Parkdale, I’ve developed a weird fascination with this page. It’s a list of all the crimes that happen (and are reported to police) in Toronto and it’s updated regularly. In the Internet age, I think most big cities have similiar web postings.
Visiting the page has become routine for me, since it’s how I originally kept updated on the search for and arrest of the shooter. But now it’s like a drug, a crime writer’s obsession.
The press releases are really matter-of-fact. It’s after reporters get their hands on the news that sordid, sad, scary stories emerge. I’m really skeptical about how many of the articles are filled with wrong information, stereotypes and generalizations.
So, if there are any photos included on the police webpage, before I read anything about the situation in the daily paper, I stare at them for a while, wondering what the person’s story is and why they would have done X.
I also find it interesting to track particular cases, from report to conclusion, or in some cases simply disappearance because they’re unsolved. To be honest, there are fewer violent crimes happening in my city than I would have thought, based on their prominence in the media.
Anyone else find the way crimes are reported in the media to be a total freakshow?
I just find that people have an exaggerated perception of city violence in this country. I used to live close to Main and Hasting in Vancouver and many people would freak out when learning that. This is supposedly the “armpit of Canada”. Granted, I’m a tall white guy, so I have some security privilege there, but I never got into any trouble walking on the street, and I never really felt threatened. (A tall, white guy friend of mine got mugged last year walking away from York U towards Jane St. So much for that security.) My sister had trouble with pimps trying to enroll her (what’s a 20-year old doing on the sidewalk at 5am? She couldn’t possibly be waiting for the bus!!) but even there that was about it. A lot of the times, simply not being part of the underworld is enough to keep out of trouble. Otherwise, getting mugged is somewhat frightening, but you move on. I’ve never been mugged but I’ve been held up at gunpoint. Yes, it *could* have gone bad, but what is the actual incidence of death in such cases? I mean I remember seeing your family member’s case on the news and going “oh fuck”, but like everything else, proportional perspective is what matters.
A lot of the sense of security has to do with what one feels they have to lose. A year after I moved to Toronto, I returned to Vancouver. That time I was gainfully employed at a large corporation, and at some point I felt a lot less secure walking on the street. What had changed? The streets were the same, but I was carrying some laptop in my backpack, and I felt I also had more to lose. So I think fears about individual property also matter.
Also, I haven’t done much analysis on that, but a couple Toronto-born friends that know the city more than I do that are in student journalism say that a lot of the violent crime reporting is often assigned to iconic crime areas (”Jane and Finch”) even though the actual location of the crime is quite removed from those areas. So there’s another distortion.
Another friend of mine grew up in Newmarket and says that one thing that’s always frightened her were gangs of white teenage boys travelling around pickup trucks and looking for trouble on Friday nights. What trouble were these guys up to? We don’t ever hear about suburban crime, but it surely happens. Surrey in Vancouver is notoriously messy but you didn’t hear too much about what actually happened there on the news, I think. I wasn’t much watching the news in Vancouver, so I could be wrong.
Comment by Frandroid Atreides — February 19, 2007 @ 4:05 pm
Frandroid: Rowdy white guys in pickup trucks scare me, and I grew up downtown…
You’re right about how even the roughest neighbourhood is often only truly scary if you’re part of the scene. It’s like there are several worlds overlapping at any one time. I didn’t always feel safe walking around Parkdale when I was younger, but people from the neighbourhood left me alone. And I knew what to do if a John approached me or someone followed me down the street–I always had some kind of plan.
A couple years back, I did an interview with Parkdale’s neighbourhood paper, about a vigilante group that moved in when I was in my early teens. Now they were scary!
Comment by Emily — February 19, 2007 @ 5:58 pm
I have lived in every major city in canada, and if you guys want to see some seriously messed up stuff, 5 words for you. Pointe St Charles Montreal Qc. Wastings and Pain is nothing compared to that cess pool, even the rats have body guards.
Comment by Robert — March 22, 2007 @ 5:37 pm