Between June 16 and September 8, 2014 the area between Wellesley to Shuter, and Church to Parliament in the east end of downtown will be the focus of an ongoing police sweep, led by 51 Division and involving dozens of officers and organized under the auspices of the Toronto Anti Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS). They are bringing in an additional 24 constables and 12 staff sergeants on both foot and bike.
Monday, June 16th, residents and community organizations held a press conference to demand an end to police sweeps in the Downtown East. Photo from OCAP.
The Downtown East community is one of the poorest urban neighbourhoods in Canada – it is suffering from a lack of resources and services and definitely not from a lack of policing. There is a high concentration of homelessness, overfull shelters, run-down community housing, and underfunded services. Communities like ours are bearing the brunt of an escalating agenda of austerity coupled with the impact of upscale redevelopment. If the money being put into this crackdown were, instead, used to provide housing and shelter, the safety and well being of the people in this community, and many others, would be far better served.
The TAVIS intervention may be presented as a challenge to violence or as part of the ‘war on drugs’ but like all claims of a ‘war on drugs’ it will be felt in this community as ‘the war on the poor’. It is also sickening irony that this past fall and winter, 51 Division police failed to even use this kind of mass resources to alert women in the community of a series of sexual assaults let alone find the perpetrators.
We also know that where TAVIS has gone before – communities like Rexdale and Jane-Finch, they have only brought chaos and increased profiling and criminalization. Poor communities across Toronto have been policed to death – and we are sick of it. They can’t arrest their way out of poverty and inequality – but Toronto cops are making sure that the new jail and mega prisons the government has spent billions on, will continue to fill up.
What will happen when TAVIS invades our community
Homeless people will be harassed. Poor drug users will be targeted while drugs are consumed with impunity up the road in wealthy Rosedale. Sex workers will face an escalation in police scrutiny that can only make life harder and more dangerous for them. As civil liberties are disregarded, indigenous people, immigrants and people of colour, especially youth will face disruption of their lives and criminalization.
Why is this happening
This police repression is part of an ongoing effort to gentrify, a.k.a. ‘revitalize’ the Downtown East community through the process of social cleansing and an effort to push poor people and services out of the neighbourhood. On top of this, just around the corner from the Downtown East, World Pride will be hosted in the village – despite many poor folks in our community being LGBTQ, the distraction of poor folks for tourists will not be tolerated. Also, the Downtown East neighbourhood is alarmingly close to the athletes’ village of next year’s Pan Am Games, we strongly suspect that his year’s crackdown is a dry run for an even greater police intrusion in 2015.
TAVIS is not welcome in our community. We are not going to let them roam our streets with impunity. Their patrols will be monitored and their abuses challenged. Meet the needs that exist in this community and stop police harassment of those who live here.
From the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
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