Thank you for letting everybody know.Roy_2k5 wrote:It really depends. Gangs usually appear, because of the economic or even political environment. Gangs in Toronto does sound like a contradiction in many ways. Many parts of the Greater Toronto Area are just filthy rich.
The Regions in the GTA..
York region: Markham, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, etc are filthy rich; the number of posh houses infers little gang activity. That region reminds me of some anglo-saxon community, but with a mainly migrant population. I highly doubt, anyone with such living standards would join gangs. More of them are going to university, especially the higher up ones, like UofT.
Peel Region: Brampton, Mississauaga, Caledon are rich too, especially Mississuaga, since many want the city to seperate from GTA. Caledon is all rural and Brampton is doing fine. There might be gangs down there, but they are more like crews. That doesn't mean they aren't deadly; it should not be that difficult for those guys to procure arms and then go kill a next person, that is, if they're willing to give up their nice living standards. Hey some have done it...
Halton: No gangs here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the white folks got a shotgun per family. Doing exceptionally well, since the agro sector is heavily subsidized in Canada. Those guys earn too much, along with the police forces.
Durham: Filthy rich too. Even though areas like Ajax has a good number of Blacks, they earn mad money too. We're talking about over $70,000 per household, ~3 members per household averages. That means most of the kids are freaking spoiled and live in heated households.
GTA = It's a financial heaven. In the Toronto core, it differs, slightly.
Toronto
Downtown: St. James Town is just awful, plenty of projects and seems more like a potential gang-breeding grounds. However, I hear nothing on television and they speak of far-fetched ideas like Scarborough turning into the next Compton.
Most of the neighborhoods in Toronto are pretty decent. The three that probably contradict my claim includes: [Includes my view as well]
Etobicoke:
Clarification: Most of Etobicoke, seems fairly safe. My grandmother is down there and she's the type that would definitely react big time to gang violence. If it was really big, she wouldn't be living in Etobicoke.
Rexdale: The Rexdale area has a massive manufacturing complex, so it is possible that the slow growth in the manufacturing sector has been causing unemployment down there. I'm not sure, though. What I do know is that many that move out of Rexdale in order to live in the more posh areas of York Rexdale ain't too poor, many live really nice in the Albion area and what-not. When I was down there, I remember seeing quite a good number of houses. Many drive cars and there are plenty of South Asians down there and they live nice. There does exist South Asian gangs, mainly Tamil (i.e. VVT), but gangbanging US style is rare. There are many that could easily a next person, but that is related to money-related issues. The same applies to the black gangs down there, but I don't anything more about them. My uncle who used to live in Rexdale sees crime as more of an issue down in Scarborough versus Rexdale. He's a lot more balanced, so I guess his view is fairly legit.
North York: There are many different views regarding this area. I know few living in Yonge-Eglinton and that area is far form dangerous. It is more like dangerously wealthy. You got million dollar complexes down in North York: Bridle Path, to be precise. On the other hand, Jane & Finch can be pretty dangerous, which means the pretty frequent gangbanging down there. The two ethnic groups behind them are the Blacks and the Vietnamese. The reason why we see so much crime there is because of the huge metro housing complexes. They seem like recipes for disaster and it seems like there are forces up that want ghettos to stay,... if they didn't then these areas would have been poverty-free long time.
Scarborough: I have been down here, for most of my 12 years in Canada. I don't know, I find it quite quiet. There do exist gangs and many love to smoke marijuana, but that's fair. Gang wars do happen, but they are definitely not occuring daily, let alone a death daily. I feel that many down here wants to see deaths occur daily. I don't know how to react to that. But areas like Guildwood, Port Union, etc are far from dangerous; it's more like dangerously rich areas. In Highland Creek, there are probably more racoons out there than gangs. Fights in schools do occur, though. We hear of suicide, rape, etc, like in Luxembourg.
I'm living in Scarborough West, one of the poorer parts of Scarborough and it seems like living standards are not too bad. The projects down here aren't massive and are mainly comprised of East Africans, Jamaicans and whites. As for crime, many especially the media (I'm calling out CityTV) are pointing at Jamaicans (they use the term Black, instead) as the ones mainly involved in street crime. But if you actually go around area-to-area, many of the younger South Asians will claim that Browns are doing more crazy stunts than Jamaicans. I am not sure, which is true. I am aware that there does exist many crazy Brown gangs, especially the Tamil ones. South Asians tend to live better off, though, but there are quite a number living in the projects. I have a hard time figuring out the situation, because most South Asians don't like to associate themselves with lower living standards, while Jamaican adults would have no labelling much of their community as poor. The reason I look at poverty is because street gangs only exist in areas with heavy poverty, if we're talking about the crews in say,
Areas like Malvern, West Hill were pretty active years back, especially down in Galloway. Malvern isn't as intense as the media claims, because I used play soccer down there quite frequently, yet I never heard a gun shot, let alone daily. Crime has been declining substantially in those areas too. Browns in those areas tend to have higher living standards so crime was probably never that intense in that area to begin with. The Jamaican and/or Blacks (I don't know about East Africans) were behind most of the crime in those areas (according to the media). Others claim that Browns, Russians, etc contribute a huge number of the crimes.
Toronto: Most of the city is fairly safe; but maybe the 1.7 per 100,000 crime rate would go a bit over 2 if it's just the crime rate for Toronto. The figure doesn't match the US cities, though, so it's nothing that some real comprehensive social programs can deal with.
My take on all of this..
The media are overexagerrating the crimes in Toronto. And it is very well prepared too. It seems like they have an ulterior-motive. One of their aims is to just strengthen prejudice and two, increase the police forces. In Toronto, there are teacher, nurse, doctor shortage; none of them get a great pay either. Yet there are many out there proposing that we should increase the police force.In the GTA there is 5 cops per 1 person in most of the GTA. They have more "clandestine" operations in donut stores or Shoppers Drug Mart. Even when I'm take a walk to Shoppers at 2AM to get some utencils (bristol board, etc), I see a bunch of police offers wandering the store. And this was when, crime was reaching its highs, almost fives years back.
My post may sound like an echo, but I don't think that gang crime is that much of an issue. Instead poverty is a problem and when we have ~15% of Canada's population below the poverty line (even more worse than US) then it is a big problem. Get rid of that than Canada is even more safer city. I am quite sure, most in Toronto or any part of the world would want less poverty in their community.
PS: Looking forward to here views from others.
It's about time somebody told the truth.
