Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
Some of these factors are at play in certain northern Ontario cities like Thunder Bay, with the resulting higher than average violent crime rates.
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Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Prince George, and to a lesser extent Edmonton, and all of the smaller cities in the general area (it excludes Southern Alberta and BC), which I sort of refer to as the "Thunder Bay to Prince George Corridor", all have one thing in common: 10% of the population is native, and 10% of that population lives in a kind of poverty that is probably unheard of to many Canadians today. Aboriginal people in remote communities often live in even worse conditions than those in urban areas, and poverty tends to be more severe, exacerbated by poverty.
Thunder Bay has more calls for public drunkenness than Toronto. That isn't a percentage figure, either. In terms of the actual times someone calls 911 to report an inebriated individual in public, Thunder Bay beats Toronto on a pure numbers basis. It totals about 4,000 a year, or nearly a third of our total crime. Most of those calls are coming from the same community of about 150 homeless people who abuse substances like hairspray, mouthwash and hand sanitizer (and sometimes more dangerous things, like rubbing alcohol) to get drunk. Almost all are either residential school survivors or descendents of survivors.
A lot of people have recently starting referring to them as zombies. In many ways, that's what they are. They're not really alive anymore, but they're not dead yet. Sometimes I find one passed out in the grass pleading for death, and people like that being rushed to hospital with police escorts make up a large portion of our ambulance trips. We put 13 homeless people into a substance abuse treatment facility for the past year and we've seen a measurable decrease in ambulance calls as a result.
After the public drunkenness issue, we have a serious domestic violence issue, again primarily committed by and against native people who are living in conditions of dire poverty as a result of their past experiences. Almost all of our homicides this year were committed by and against people who do not actually live in the city, they were simply here when the disputes (which happen often) escalated to the point of assault causing death. The bulk of the city's 911 calls (they've said 80 to 90%) happen at the same 2% of addresses.
This isn't something police can (nor should) deal with, but there is no provincial or national strategy to cope with it. The western provinces have more responsive provincial governments because it's affecting their largest cities, but Thunder Bay is Ontario's ~20th largest at this point, so we basically are stuck dealing with it on our own, and most of the time the whole debate devolves into the mayor complaining at First Nations leadership (or vice versa) while the local racist community just spreads misinformation about tax exemptions and suggests there is no problem.
And before you accuse me of being racist for saying this; yes, this situation is racist. It disproportionately affects native people and because of their race the situation is largely ignored or taken out of context. You cannot cure addicts by putting them in jail, and you cannot reduce violent crime when more than 95% of it is happening between people who know each other in their own homes, but no one in leadership positions (other than the police chief and the occasional city councillor) seems to understand that. Our police even admitted that they're largely powerless to do anything about the crime rate because it's all happening due to homelessness (which isn't a police responsibility) or inside private homes, where they can't patrol.
Of course, not all crimes are committed by native people, and not all native people commit crimes. Most native people I know and see on a regular basis (something like 95% of them) are just like everyone else, living normal middle class lives.
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Stupid Ford. They got one up despite him, though.
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