The Record: Preventive action needed to curb local shootings
KITCHENER-WATERLOO – There’s a big question troubling a lot of minds in Waterloo Region these days. What can this community do to stop the steady, frightening rise in local gun crimes?
While there were 15 shootings in the region in all of 2020, there have been no fewer than 13 so far this year — despicable, lawless actions that injured nine people and terrorized entire neighbourhoods.
[…]But this is far from just an issue for police. Instead of pinning so many of our hopes for staying safe and well on law enforcement and criminal justice officials, we need to start thinking differently. We need to listen to other voices, not just the voices of those wearing a badge. Prevention, not reaction, should become the motto of the day.
This isn’t a call to reinvent the wheel. To a large degree it’s a plea to put in practice solutions that have long been known. For instance, in 2008 the Ontario government commissioned “The Roots of Youth Violence” report, which offered recommendations for preventing crime that didn’t involve the justice system. But “that report went nowhere,” according to Michael Parkinson of the Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council.
Likewise, Parkinson keenly regrets the demise of the federally funded inReach youth street gang prevention program that operated in Waterloo Region between 2009 and 2013. The program, which among other things offered athletic and educational initiatives to young people at a neighbourhood level, was having a positive impact. But it ended far too early when its funding was cut.
Now Parkinson and other members of the Crime Prevention Council argue this community needs to introduce similar programs that will address the root causes of criminal activity, including poverty, food insecurity, family conflicts, racism and mental health challenges.
We second that call. Such programs would offer a real hope of preventing the kind of gun violence we’ve been witnessing. We need to know who is doing the shooting and why. And because several of this year’s local shootings involved elements of organized crime from many parts of southern Ontario, many municipalities will have to join forces.