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Disturbing pattern of murders
All races and classes must fight violence: Activists
Media Release: The Toronto Sun -- Saturday, May 31, 2008
By: Tamara Cherry, SUN Media
Memo: With files from Rob Lamberti
Two more young black men were gunned down on Toronto streets this week. And unless we want more bodies to drop, something needs to change, anti-violence advocates say. "It's everybody's responsibility," Audette Shephard, co-chairman of United Mothers Opposing Violence Every where said yesterday. "We are accountable -- whether you're pink, yellow, green or red."
Seven years after her 19-year-old son, Justin, was shot to death, Shephard gets the feeling that if the victim is black or from an at-risk community, it doesn't seem to matter to outsiders. Shammal Ramsey, 19, and Levis Taylor, 17, fit into the formula set by so many other homicide victims in this city when they were shot Wednesday: Young, black, in low-income neighbourhoods. Each had had minor run-ins with the law, but no criminal records. They weren't hardened criminals.
Political calls for handgun bans were echoed, but homicide cops have received few leads about who fired the shots. "I hear, 'Oh, it's Malvern. Oh, it's Jane-Finch. Oh, it's Regent.' Then it seems like those people or their lives are not valued as much as somebody who lives somewhere that's more affluent," Shephard said. "It's a human being. We're all part of the same human race. Everybody's life is worth the same. Everybody has a mother. Everybody feels the pain," she said.
"Young black men continue to kill and, for the most part, shoot young black men at an alarming rate," Toronto Police Staff-Insp. Brian Raybould said. "It's worse than disturbing. The beat goes on. Day after day, year after year, we keep having this happen." "Guns are the problem," Raybould said. "That's the weapon of choice and these guys continue to do it."
"We can never lose sight of the facts of the personal nature of what's occurred," said Pastor Rob Meikle of Kingdom House Christian Centre in Mississauga. "This doesn't become an independent political or economic study ... It's not just a black issue, but an issue that's facing one of the best cities in the world.
"These are children. This is a mom's son. A father's son. Somebody's brother, somebody's nephew, somebody's friend, somebody's neighbour," Meikle said. "It's painfully tragic." The "why" behind this week's homicides is a question the entire city must address, Meikle said.
It's a question surrounding not just the fallen but those who killed them, he said, because a "hardness" forms around the gunmen, who have fallen into a life "that leads to this tragic ending." "In whatever mindset, whatever circumstances, whatever pain, whatever disappointment, whatever experience they've gone through in the past, in their mind, they think they're doing right," he said. "We've got to find a way to connect with that culture," Meikle said.
"The problem seems to be growing on us. But if we can get a few changes, a few wins, a few changes in lives, and create an influence within the community and the subculture, then we stand a chance of really making inroads."
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