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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Target Policing in Toronto - Article﻿</title>﻿
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﻿<b﻿>﻿Target Policing in Toronto 
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by Susan Bender﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, September - October 1999﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
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The actions of Toronto City Council, led by Major Mel Lastman, once again speak much louder than words. After voting in October 1998 in favour of declaring Toronto a national disaster because of the dire situation faced by homeless people, Council voted to give the police $1.9 million to target homeless, poor and other marginalized people who use the streets, parks and other public areas. This eleven week campaign will focus the efforts of cops (who are being paid for overtime) across the city on what are being called "hot spots'.
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The rhetoric is familiar. In a press release issued one week after the start of the campaign, Lastman crowed about the success of the project designed to make people in Toronto feel safe. This despite the fact that the crime rate in the city is decreasing. 
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What this Community Action Policing (CAP) program thinly disguises is a "clean-up" campaign which determines who is a member of a community and who is not. It is very evident that poor people, people who are homeless, psychiatric survivors, drug users, prostitutes, young people, Aboriginal people, people of colour and lesbians and gays are not welcome. Those who use public areas such as parks, street corners and sidewalks as places to make money, to get out of the killing heat or to use and enjoy like anyone else are being harassed by police teams that swoop into areas demanding and sometimes confiscating identification, taking notes on what people are wearing, their tattoos, fines and arrests, and in some cases taking pictures. 
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What is happening now is similar to what happened in 1994 with Projects 35 and 40. In Allen Gardens, 65 black men were given over $3000 worth of tickets for loitering and told not to come back to the park. Harassing and, in effect, criminalizing people drives them away from services that people need, such as food, shelter, health care and particularly harm reduction programs. All this is happening at a time when other government actions such as the Tenant Protection Act and the closure of hostel beds mean that shelter and affordable housing is even more difficult to find.
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The law and order agenda at the federal and provincial level has once again made its way to the municipal level. It will certainly win approval from members of residents' associations organized in increasingly gentrified neighbourhoods across Toronto, including Parkdale and the Jarvis Street areas. The crackdown can also be seen as a possible demonstration project to prove to the Olympic Association that Toronto can be as ruthless as its competitors in getting rid of what tourists might not like to see. However, agencies working with all those who are the potential or real victims of this crackdown have organized to send a resounding ÒNOÓ to target policing.
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The Toronto Disaster Relief Committee was instrumental in organizing together a press conference on July 15 which pulled together over 60 diverse groups concerned about the crackdown. The group was able to force a meeting with Mel Lastman and other officials to press forward with our message that homelessness, poverty, and drug use are social and health issues and that campaigns such as this are racist and discriminatory. The group will continue to meet and is organizing the distribution of information to people in parks and on the street about their rights, to document abuses and to build resistance against this campaign - another form of state and police violence.
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If you would like to get involved, please call Susan Bender c/o New socialist at 969-3209
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