Police walk 'ghetto' in new anti-violence strategy

Eglinton Avenue West: no other neighbourhood in Toronto has seen more violence this year than the square mile centred around Keele Street, but tonight it is quiet as seven officers walk the hilly, concrete landscape.

Const. J.C. Tremblay, a husky 28-year-old officer with an earnest, congenial demeanour, greets a young black man in a hoodie slouched at a table inside the Coffee Time at Keele and Eglinton. He asks, cheerily, for his name, his address and phone number while filling out a small form that will serve as a record of their conversation.

"How tall are you? How much do you weigh? What is that scar on the side of your neck? A tattoo? Is that your street name?"

The man answers flatly: "My rap name."

"Stunner" is 22 and lives near Jane Street and Driftwood Avenue or where he calls "the ghetto."

After the officer has left, he secures his hood over his head with a ball cap. "They just keep harassing people. First thing they do is they say, ‘What are you doing around here?' Then they get to the point where they ask for ID. They're not supposed to do that. That ain't cool. You have no right to ask people their status if the person is not making trouble."

"Because a guy is black, his pants are down there, it doesn't mean he's a gangster. It's just a style."

There is something jarring about watching seven police officers move through a neighbourhood, questioning young men whose only apparent crime at the moment may be loitering. The cards that the officers fill out on every contact are saved, and some names are checked on the police database, even though no crime has been committed, or is even necessarily suspected.

But, in a district pockmarked by bullet holes, many regard such tactics as a necessary evil, even the salve for its wounds. Const. Tremblay and his fellow officers are part of the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy, or TAVIS, which combines tough enforcement and friendly community outreach, instituted after 2005's Summer of the Gun.

Chief Bill Blair, who was once a "neighbourhood cop" and is structuring the force using the lessons he learned on the street, says a drop in crime since that summer (30% overall) can be attributed partly to the three-year-old initiative.

The success has been rewarded. On Tuesday, Rick Bartolucci, Ontario's Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, toured the Keele Street and Eglinton Avenue area and then announced a $10-million boost that will ensure TAVIS's continuation over the next two years.

Officers have patrolled the west end neighbourhood every day for weeks following a spate of gang-related shootings in the spring. In May, the drug squad swept the area, arresting alleged drug dealers and users, before the TAVIS team came in.

"What we try to explain to people is that we're not here to harass you," Sgt. Peter Troup says. "We don't know who you are. We're trying to get out and get to know who's in the neighbourhood. You shouldn't have a problem talking to us if you're a good citizen of the community. You should want us to be here keeping you safe."

Sgt. Troup, 47, is the only veteran officer on foot patrol tonight. His soldiers, who are among the 75 officers seconded to the neighbourhood from across the city, as well as to the Jane/Finch area, are mostly in their late twenties and early thirties with a few years of experience.

The officers stroll past pavement spray-painted with MS13 (Mara Salvatrucha, a Central American gang) and EWC (Eglinton West Crypts). They climb Eglinton Avenue, with its beauty supply stores with wigs on display and its variety stores with food labels taped over bullet holes in the front window. They greet almost every person they pass and they stop to talk to shopkeepers.

At one point, Const. Carmen Wong, 31, glances up at the balconies of a high rise on Gabian Way. Sometimes, people throw things.

The officers stop to distribute flyers to youths playing basketball in Coronation Park. Further up the path, an 18-year-old man is slumped on a railing in front of a low-rise apartment building. Even his face is slumped as he looks at the officers but does not react.

"Hey man, how's it going?" Const. Tremblay says from several metres away.

"What brings you here? What are you doing?"

His answer is barely audible: "Waiting."

They record his information, thank him and then invite him to play soccer at a nearby school. "It's all free," Const. Andrea Tristao, 24, says. "We help put it on but we don't bother anyone there."

After they move through Coronation Park, Sgt. Troup - pulled here from the drug squad's clandestine laboratory unit - identifies a few of the young men they pass as "hard core gangbangers .... Guys who would shoot you as soon as look at you. One of the kids had been found with a Tech 9 machine gun."

Down an alley parallel to Eglinton Avenue where trees hang over corrugated metal fences and the smell of marijuana is almost hidden by the stench of garbage, an eight-year-old boy with a pink popsicle waits for his mother who is inside what police allege is a "24-hour booze can."

As four officers approach, a crowd behind the bungalow at the end of the alley disperses. Visitors allegedly come all day and night to the two rental homes facing Keele Street for alcohol and drugs.

From afar, Joy M., who has lived in the neighbourhood for 36 years, watches the officers and clucks her tongue. Later, in front of her home on Gabian Way, she censors her comments to them.

"You know something, a lot of kids are afraid of you," the mother of six tells Sgt. Troup. "I think some of the cops intimidate the kids a lot. The cops are supposed to get to know the kids."

They speak for several minutes; Sgt. Troup invites her to an upcoming community event.

"We talk to kids. We find out who they are, where they live. Once we know them and we know they're good kids, the next time, we walk up to them and say ‘hi,'" he says.

"Some people have an opinion that we're an occupying force and any wrong move they make, we're busting them. It's not like that. It's about changing attitudes. Sometimes we're changing our attitudes too."