Gang activity on the rise

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The streets of Toronto have become a battleground for gun-toting street youth gangs, Detective Cst. Doug Minor told a March 17 gathering. "It's organized crime," said Minor, a member of the Guns and Gangs Task Force.

The 13-year veteran of the Metropolitan Toronto Police told a group of Native and non-Native teens at the new Tumivut youth shelter on Vaughan Rd. that there are 200 to 300 actual gangs in Toronto.

Minor disputes recently released reports that say there are 57 gangs currently active in the Greater Toronto Area with 1,132 members. "I hate stats. Half of it is crap," he said. "The numbers change all the time."

"Humans like to fight," Minor said. "Gangs have been established since the beginning of Toronto."

The courts deal with gang members daily and are not too lenient on known gang members. "The sentence is usually doubled," Minor said.

"Gang influences are also found in lines of clothing," he told the teens. "It's called 'opportunistic sales'."

Gang violence now is the worst seen in Toronto streets in 10 years. Weapons are common. Females and children as young as nine and 10 are attracted to gangs. A gang was defined by Minor as any group of people engaging in socially disruptive criminal behaviour and using an identifying name, logo or colour.

Drugs that gang members deal are very deadly and in many cases you are near death when becoming stoned on drugs such as ecstasy, Minor said.

"You might as well as go out and buy a bottle of rat killer and chug it down, because that is what you're doing," he warned.

But the presentation provided little new information for the handful of teens who gathered to hear police speak. One youth said he would not wear certain colors in the Rexdale area of Toronto because of gang activity.

Native street gangs are not flourishing in Toronto, but attempts have been made to start them up, said Cst. Monica Rutledge of the Aboriginal Peacekeeping Unit. She doesn't know of any Aboriginal youth gangs operating on the streets of Toronto.