HUNTER: Crime spike gets nary a mention on campaign trail

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ITEM: A wealthy member of the Toronto Maple Leafs is the victim of a shocking carjacking.

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ITEM: A smaller Ontario town is being ravaged by a drug-fueled homicide epidemic.

ITEM: A young girl’s body is found in a dumpster in one of Canada’s wealthiest neighborhoods; another child’s body is discovered floating in the Grand River.

ITEM: A rampaging opiate addiction crisis that killed nearly 3,000 Ontarians in 2021.

And yet, on the provincial campaign trail, there is nary a word about a rising crime rate that is unnerving people from Toronto to Tamworth.

Liberal leader Steven Del Duca has reached into the old Grit trick bag and boldly claimed that, if elected, he will make handguns illegal.

“Handguns are already effectively banned,” one Toronto detective I know told me. “You have to go through a mountain of paperwork to even see one from a distance.”

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So, a red herring?

“There are no teeth in the sentencing if you get caught with an illegal gun,” the cop said. “What’s the point? Bad guys will still have guns and when they get caught they’ll be released back into the communities they terrorized in the first place.”

What’s most surprising to the veteran investigator is that none of the candidates for premier — Tory incumbent Doug Ford, the NDP’s Andrea Horwath, and Del Duca — are discussing the violent crime and drugs that have spread their evil tentacles from Toronto to the province’s smaller towns.

“Yeah, it is surprising. There’s been a rash of carjackings in Toronto. When it happens to Mitch Marner, you have to ask what’s going on,” the cop said. “You have to ask yourself: Is our society becoming okay with American-style crime? Are we becoming numb to it? Is it acceptable?”

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He added: “Now, violent crime is everywhere. Small towns across the province are seeing violent, big-city crime.”

And that crime spike terrifies people. Statisticians, criminologists, and others can try and soothe our nerves. Really, no, things aren’t as bad as they were in the 1970s.

But when you go to a slew of funerals, talk to grieving mothers and toss police media releases you once routinely covered into the wastebasket because there are too many of them to handle, you have a problem. And yet, things could be much worse.

We can probably start by thanking homicide detectives, dedicated paramedics, talented doctors, and nurses for keeping a lid on the murder rate.

COVID lockdown has, no doubt, unleashed the inner demons in thousands. Sometimes that manifests itself in violence, as Toronto Homicide chieftain Hank Idsinga told me last month.

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“Mental health is a part of it, for sure,” the cop I talked to said. “But there is also the bail that lets people accused of serious, often violent offences, walk free. They get caught with a gun, get bail, and there they are, back on the streets.”

So, crime is an issue, right? Apparently not.

The silence is deafening from the party leaders.

If two dead children aren’t enough to spark some kind of conversation, what is? The only crime the leaders seem zeroed in on is hate crime and measuring up huge swathes of the population for white hoods.

Back in the real world, bullets are flying and junkies are dying.

Maybe politicians should talk to a few moms, like Ayan Firin.

Her 21-year-old stepson, Abdiweli Yusuf was murdered in a drive-by shooting on May 19, 2015. His daughter is now seven years old.

The case remains unsolved. It is unlikely to be aired on the campaign trail.

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@HunterTOSun