Toronto Police Service - Gang Prevention Town Hall #2 - Ionview

only the food guy is stuck down the street picking up the coffee right but it is what it is it's Toronto the traffic is crazy you know like good stuff so first off and foremost thank you everybody for coming this is the hardest part for all of us right is just getting people to show up and for us when we first started looking at doing these town halls there was a way bigger purpose for that it wasn't just to get in here and spread a whole bunch information and then walk away from here there's two parts to this one is we want to give you our perspective we want to give you our framework and explain why we're looking to do that going forward to not only prevent gang violence but to prevent kids from joining gangs but then we wanted to hear back from you to help fill in those gaps for us we need to hear back from the community members how unfair is it for me to come in here as a police officer in Toronto and come into your neighborhoods and your communities and say this is what you need to do without at least having a five-minute conversation which today we're gonna have the luxury to be able to have an hour conversation about finding out in your perspective in your lens what's happening on a daily basis we think we know and what I mean by we is the Toronto Police Service all our different partner agencies which were lucky we have some of them here today we think we have an understanding but we don't know until we actually speak to you actually live in this community to find out what are you going through so we'd like to do today is be able to present you an overview of what we think we know and kind of the direction we want to go and during that overview you're gonna start to put together a puzzle in your own head and your stories are going to start to fill into there and I'm assuming that anybody who's here from the community you're here because this is of interest to you am I wrong or am i right and is it of interest because you have some connection that's not an impact level have you been impacted by gangs at some point or another has it been family members has it been friends has it been kids in your community that have been impacted by gangs right and as time goes on for all of us we realize as we get a little bit older that hey there's more to this than just putting bad guys in jail or kids who make bad decisions there's way more to this and over the last 15 years traditionally the Toronto Police Service has been heavily engaged in the enforcement aspect of things but guess what have we put a dent in it sure could we be doing better way for sure definitely sure but there it is we can always do this a little bit better maybe we're missing things so not being said when we did these town halls and when we started planning this over a year and a half ago there's a lot of obstacles and one of those obstacles we'll talk about back end is how do we engage impact the communities like yourself so that you feel you have value when you come to these type of places to be able to have your voices heard and heard in a way that you feel like it's respected and that it's gonna mean something to everybody going forward so for that again thank you for showing up give yourself a round of applause showing up I see some smiles happen for yourself I'd be the same thing it's cool I cut myself when I wake up some things that's all good before we begin really the big picture to this and and this whole thing and I should highlight it for you because my whole shtick with this and my partner who's unfortunately out there trying to organize for the food to come in is listen man we work on honesty all right so I will be 100% honest with you and what I can be honest with some stuff I have to keep kind of secret squirrel because it's police stuff but I'll be 100 cent honest with you with our perspectives and what we've learned and where we want to go going forward and I hope that you can do the same with us and understand that I have the cameras going now that's gonna be off when we have those conversations all right 100% that's gonna be off because we really want to know and know that we'll be able to use our platforms as Toronto Police Service officers as city of Toronto employees as community housing employees as Humber College and Guelph Humber representation that we're gonna be able to take your voices and put them into our chains and our platforms that's the purpose of this that we need to know what's happening from you guys put it in our platforms and then spread it out to say hey at the very ground level these are all the things that we're missing that we might not know about that's so important for the people up top but second of that the point of these town halls was to connect you with social services as well as let you know all of the partners that we're trying to integrate into this and we talked about the partner group so I'll get into how we identified who we have to integrate into this but really it was to have some partners here and they couldn't make it to all of them because there's so many of these that we're doing throughout the city from east to west north to south but now we have the representation so really from the partner agencies that are here that would like to spend five minutes and kind of talking about their element into this bigger picture I'll give them a chance to speak now so first I'll introduce Scott McKean from the City of Toronto Scott has been with us from the beginning we started this we started this three years ago and we kept it under wraps because we have to figure out what we have to do so Scott I'll give it over to you man if you have 5-10 minutes kind of go over what you got to do and kind of how you guys do things so okay so now we'll get to the nitty gritty right so again for those of you who I haven't had a chance to meet or haven't chance to talk to again these cameras they're only set up for this all right and right now it's just my portion of talking it's not for me because I like to see my my handsome face on TV what what happens is when we first got into this and Jason and I were tasked in late 2016 actually going in 2017 we were tasked with the story we were tasked with the idea of how do you get gang members out of gangs all right that was the question that we got asked and the reason why we got to ask that was our Deputy Chief Jim Raymer all right he's up there and for you who aren't familiar with policing operations or how it works in a corporate structure I want you to imagine a big company right a massive company and then a massive company there's like a president that's our chief of police and then there's vice president's and we have four of them and those are called deputy chiefs and one of these vice presidents was Deputy Chief Jim remember came down to guns and gangs and he found Jason Kondo who's been there for 4,000 years as you can tell and he said to Jason was listen we have to figure out how do we get gang members out of gangs and Jason said I got to find the most handsome Indian guy I know and that's how I got involved into it right so Jason called me up and said listen Ron we want to free this out are you interested and for me I was 150% interested because in my policing career I've done the gamut from community stuff to hard enforcement stuff you see on TV and I was back on the road when this opportunity came up and I very much enjoyed being a constable on the street and responding that I'm on calls but this for me it struck a very familiar court and one of the things that got mentioned today was that this is our area of expertise and if you were to ask me a year ago two years ago do I consider myself an expert in here I would have entertained the thought of possibly yes but as time goes on and we delve into the research the more I learned about this issue the more I learned I know nothing the more I learn that realistically nobody knows anything because the problem is much bigger than how do we stop kids getting into gangs or how do we get a gang member out of gangs or just gangs in a problem I want you to think now and in this room what do gangs do what type of crimes do gangs do exactly my point so for me to stand up here myself and Jason is stand up here before you and say we're experts and gangs I'm not an expert I'm very well-informed I have taken the last three years myself and J to talk to every and anybody we can that's impacted by gangs to understand perspectives to see into it but by no means are we experts but the point of this is to advocate that and say if there was one single expert in this there'd be one single solution that's not the case at all so today really with our town halls we're gonna cover off a few things all right the big one is to raise awareness on gangs to become aware of what the risk factors are associated to young people that lead them into gang lifestyle how to connect you with services at a local level and then how to identify and empower community leaders and that's being you people in this room all right the fact that you showed up here today that is our biggest challenge as a law enforcement as a police service agencies to get the people that we serve to show up whenever we say we want to be able to provide some information but also have some insight and so for that the fact that you just showed up here today in fact shows to me that not only are your leaders but your champions and champions are something very special and for us it's a great way to find who do we build up here in the community where do we take all the resources that we have access to and who do we build up outside of us the best way to deal with these type of problems is from the inside out it doesn't work from the outside in we just contain it we can't contain it we need to empower on the inside to find out what's happening in the gold champions from the inside out to set up pathways also at the end of this like I said when the cameras off we're gonna have an open discussion and in that discussion it's about insight and it's about perspectives and understanding it's going to give us an opportunity to hear well gangs look like for you every day where you feel the impacts as well as for us to be able to explain our perspective into gangs as well as for our partner agencies being the City of Toronto neighbourhood officers community housing to explain what they get on a daily basis and by understanding each other's perspectives we're gonna now have a great understanding of what the global picture is and secondary to that we have a professor from Humber College in the back it's an corbelled and the reason we have Humber College here is all these town halls are funded from provincial grants all right and when we did a provincial grant what we wanted to do is when we first got in this idea of how do you get gay members out of gangs we had to look first right we said okay what are we gonna do this so what Jay and I did was we found a bunch of police officers that we respected we sat him down and we said what would you do and everybody kind of had an answer but when we asked why you would do that nobody had a real solid base and we realized oh wait a minute this this isn't gonna work the way we think it's gonna work because if we think it's gonna work that way why wouldn't we have done it already and we found is that's called conventional wisdom all right so I want you to imagine in your household if something is broken let's say your fridge is broken and you ask your husband and he says you know it's broken he says did you hit it on the side that's conventional wisdom right we've never really tested to make sure it's worked we didn't want to do that as a police agency instead we wanted to say well what are the experts in the field saying and there's many experts from all over the world so we spent six months to year looking all over Canada for academic publications to say through people like and Korbel to Humber College what independent academic agency full of educated people looked at what the police were doing and where was success what's the point of us coming in here and trying things out when we don't know they're gonna work let's take what's worked and drop it in and then we expanded out to North America and then we expanded out to the world and we collected a whole bunch information what we found is there is no answer to get a gang member out of gangs but there is a lot of solutions with an S at the end to prevent young people from getting into gangs in the first place we realize that is where we need to focus our efforts as a collective group it's really part of this is to identify the gaps where we can support that you got a handout with you that handout we had some conversations prior to this kicking off and this is kind of how it goes is the first hours kind of just waiting waiting for the food to come in that handout gives you some basic information like different types of gangs what behavior people do that we know academically that we can source that might lead them on to the gang path so that when you're looking at it it's almost like looking at it say what symptoms do I have right so anybody who's been sick before and you go to WebMD and you type in all your symptoms and it gives you something we kind of have the same thing but for kids that are on the path to gang membership as well it gives you online resources and myself and detective Kondo our contact information is on the back there or you got email and phone number by all means you can send us a text message you can call us you can email us and if you have any follow-up questions we can guide you through the process but I'll ask you here the gangs right we just we kind of know what it is but we don't know whether they so I'll ask you here cuz definitions absolutely matter what is the purpose of a gang in your experience and it could be from movies it could be from what you see on you know in your neighborhood it could be what you heard from other people but if I ask you what is the purpose of a gang what would you say so family right and what else you were gonna say something family right what else does anybody else have anything to that so you said I don't really have gangs in the area but we had mentioned something like our family so you were laughing you're giggling what makes a giggle so that's a very interesting perspective right and we'll get into it so we're looking at Toronto Community Housing fosters gangs all right but that's not the truth there's way more objective risk factors to look at that sometimes that perspective is the easy one to say because it's right in front of you right and and inherently as people we want to blame somebody right something bad happens what do you want to do what do you wanna do you want to blame somebody or you want to say huh is there more to this we don't have time it's a busy time so we want to blame people because it feels good right what brings people together quicker than anything else boredom food what else common enemy common enemy what brings together countries more than anything else look at the United States right now right today out of all the day's horrible day right the United States has never been more divisive at least that's what the media is portrayed than any other time in history but I want you to look 18 years ago today or 18 years ago today 9/11 happened and I remember shortly after a month after I went to New York I went to Queens I went to Jamaica Avenue where I used to go shopping all the time cuz I got family out there before school they got all the bootleg clothing so I'd fly down to Queens for the day my mom worked for the airline so it only cost me like 70 bucks I remember like a month or two after 9/11 I go down to New York I take a day flight a flight in the morning I go to Queens I see my aunt and uncle and then I go on to Jamaica Avenue to buy my clothes and you could not look in any direction and not see American flags everywhere it was just jammed there that what brought that country together a common enemy right and today what we have is a group of people who might be potentially looking at things and that's why it's so easy to blame things it's so easy to say it's that person's fault or that agency's fall what does that do for the solution what happened now well what's happening now the United States is that over is that war over no how many more victims have been created right it fights all the time and we're looking at 18 years later where the superpower the the land of opportunity which literally every country in the world wants to come to the United States to grow into how future because it's the land of opportunity you can grow business there no problem if you got the grit you got the knowledge the work I think you can do it but now look at it 18 years turmoil right and divisive this well that's not what we want the point of this is we look at Toronto and we say it's a fantastic city because it's the most diverse city in the world now the word diverse comes from the word divide right and we need to keep that in perspective because the point of this is to say yes we're all individual we're all unique but for matters like this when we talk about kids shooting kids and kids recruiting the kids in the gangs we can't be divided this has to come together into an integrated fashion with a common goal and in order to integrate I cannot integrate with everybody if I'm gonna shift blame I can't do it it's it's impossible to do so it is to get over the potential what ifs and who's to blame and focus on solutions and focus on I statements what can I do how can I contribute where can I improve what can I do more of but when it comes down to the purpose of gangs we got to look at what gangs are because here's the last thing I want to do I don't want to as law enforcement or community housing or community and we had this conversation right earlier on and that's why I said I'm gonna remember this because I don't want to see a group of kids hanging out here and say they're part of a gang why would I do that labeling is a real thing right imagine you in a relationship if you had a spouse or a partner they said you always cheat on me you always cheat on me and you don't how long are you gonna how long need to be loyal to that person if every day for the course of a year you get told lie cheat on you you're gonna cheat eventually at some point well we don't want to do that with gang members either we don't want to do with kids that we say you're part of a gang you're part of a gang and they're like I'm not I'm not part of a gang but meanwhile we say it as a police agency these guys are gang members then we go to talk to our friends communing they say their gang members and then we go to city Toronto these are gang members dropping resources to help we don't know so we have to look at what actually is the purpose of a gang and all across the world the purpose of a gang is three things deal drugs control territory and collect debt all right so we have to look at what are the different things that make kids get into gangs what is the purpose of a gang at the very soul core for our to give you a mission statement of a gang I'm gonna start this brand new company I'm gonna say what is our mission stay gang controlled territory collect debt distribute drugs that is the business of gangs and unless we have kids doing that they are not again or any activity that supports that being weapons drugs firearms even human trafficking which is supported by drug use unless we can tie that to those three they're not a gang member and we don't want to say that is a gang classification the handout you have gives you the different types of groups that might be of concern for you as well as the different classifications of types and it's important to know what we're dealing with and the reason is that is imagine you go to your doctor and say doctor I'm not feeling good and he never even asks you what's wrong says you're not feeling good I got the prescription for you here you'll amoxicillin you're like you didn't ask me what's wrong I didn't get a chance to my albert's amoxicillin we can't do the same thing we have to really be able to diagnose what we're dealing with in order to apply and prescribe a proper solution now we'll ask you this who joins a gang and this is this is my favorite part okay and this is where we're gonna have to be honest I told you at the beginning we will be as honest as we can be with you right and when I asked you who joins a gang I'll pin it to you like this if we all in this room who here wants to help stop a kid from joining a gang and potentially killing somebody or getting killed himself put your hand up if that's you if you want to help it you want to help out all right committed that's a great cause that's the reason you're here free food in the back - look at this handsome face I got it I know all right so I'm gonna tell you this we have one hour one hour and I have to do two things I need to find an area to go to find this gang member that I gotta help and I'm gonna give him this pill and when I give him this magic pill he's gonna take it he's not gonna be gang memories and it grow up he's gonna live a fantastic life he's gonna be a leader in the communities gonna be a billionaire comeback grow economies in the community he's gonna be a champion I'm gonna give me this pill but I got to find this person there's two things I got to do right now off the bat where do I go what does this person look like it's honesty time no such thing as a bad thing and I need to know your experience I want to know what you guys think so what do I do where do I go first give me an area where do I go to find a game number we got one hour we're gonna change his life could be anywhere but I don't have anywhere anything I got an hour I have to find this but we're gonna change is like all of us together we're going to change this person's life but I need you to tell me where to go so where do I go in the City of Toronto to find this gang member where I'm going to change their life we are gonna change your life Church well okay any place but I can't go anyplace guys listen this is this is uncomfortable isn't it it's absolutely uncomfortable in order to find the solution to this we have to be honest in how we feel and here's the thing part of the honesty is you cannot judge somebody else for how they feel that's not the point of this the point isn't for somebody to say any area everybody say oh how dare you listen solutions and I statements solutions and I statements I need to know guys time is running out we have 58 minutes downtown we're downtown give me an intersection same mics Hospital so what's by saying legs oh I've been only walk everybody familiar with Vaughn alley walk area yeah it could be in your home yeah but what listen we're not on that we're not in the area of it could be I need a guy's over fifty five minutes okay same mics ok drug dose you see it okay so now perfect okay same mics Hospital she sees drug deals back and forth perfect now I know where to go now I got to listen downtown Toronto there's a lot of people moving back and forth right it's a crazy place I got to find something I got fifty five minutes to give somebody this pill what does this person look like what sorry look like me what does that mean they could but we're not in the area of kid we need specifics I need to know I need to know what this person looks like I got this pill I got fifty four minutes time is running out we got same legs we know there's dope being dealt there I'm gonna change this kid's life we're gonna change what I'm gonna do with your help but guys I need more direction I need to know what this person looks like that's the point I need your help we already put our hands up that we we already we already agreed here unanimously we're here to help kids we already agreed unanimously that we're here because we have some level of impact with gangs all right we do we all have some level of experience whether it's on movies whether it's real life whether it's assumption it doesn't matter the point is we have to have an open and honest conversation here because as a team as an integrated family with a solution focused idea I gotta know what I'm looking for we got to get out of the uncomfortable we have to get on we have to absolutely get uncomfortable in this conversation it's not fun for me but this is the Miss this is the necessity so what does this person look like let's start with skin color let's make it super uncomfortable here okay white guy or girl okay sex is it a guy or girl white kind of bike okay and describe the clothing to me yeah okay and then and how old is this white kind of like he's in his 50s dealing dope that's pretty out there but I like it right I like it I like it all right so we got that all right we're gonna run with this all right we're gonna run with this so now I go to same legs I find you can watch it from one right but now you got some good Intel right and that's a whole different type of feeling like you don't have that but now we're gonna go to the same legs and all we're all just gonna agree that okay that's the game fifty-year-old riding a bike dance that's wrong oh that's a gang member are we good with that is that who I'm gonna put this pill on are you guys sure because I have now 40 minutes and I'm gonna put this pill in this guy's mouth and this pills gonna change his life and make him a leader in the community we're gonna change this gang members life forever is this who I'm putting the pill into yes or no you guys have to let me know time is running out Church Street church and Wellesley why okay now then I described who's that is that same guy at church and Wellesley electrician Queen now is that same guy on the bike there same same guy is easy on the bike that 50 year old and is the other guy we're gonna give this pill I just need to know maybe I'm not sure Oh yeah okay guys we got ten seconds we got ten seconds out and I if I don't hear anything this guy's getting this pill and I need you to be okay with that I need you to be 100% okay with it because guess what we only got one we only got one and if this is the guy I'm gonna give the pill to I'm okay with it if you're okay with it because I need to know if this is the collective is this the experience we're gonna have is this how we're gonna frame this conversation so it's gonna be a man right it's a well she said yeah it's a old guy fifties riding his bicycle downtown Toronto by saying legs in the City of Toronto where there was four or five shootings last night no no I got it I got I'm just I'm just making sure we're all on the same page we're good ten I need more that's what masks I need more and you guys are a collective and we all have impacts but I'm not hearing like so I'm good with this nine eight black guy okay 50s okay fifties black guy in church in Queen all right yeah okay so we have two right sorry this is the uncomfortable part but that's okay don't worry about that right don't question it because that's his experiences right you got your own he's got his and the ideas we're gonna stay solutions focus we're gonna drive for answer so now I find a black guy clean in Wellesley Queen of church and it's 50s and what does this guy look like tell me I need more descriptions because there's there's a lot of Colored People Def Con Toronto I gotta know who's gonna get this pill because we have six seconds I need two whole five four sorry okay black guy 16:22 dreadlocks and tattoos sorry that's the first time I've heard anybody say black kid that age right yeah okay great so now we're on it right so for the sake of this we'll use that gentleman's uh we use that gentleman now I go there I go to church and Wellesley and I got this pill and I find that got a list of description and I grab him and I say to him I'm gonna change your life you're at risk of gang involvement I'm gonna give this pill we're gonna save your life and he looks to be and what does he say he goes what the hell are you talking about yeah that's that is the absolute point of this exercise so right the absolute point is exercise is to acknowledge that our experiences are not concrete experiences and they do not mean that how we have one experience is what it's like for everybody it's not it's different you had a different experience you had a different experience you know mr. King in the back kind of different experience and all of us have different experiences the point is there's validity to all of them so you cannot and you should not be able to afraid to voice up what your experiences are with this going forward when we have the off-the-record conversation we need to have shared experiences as law enforcement we need to know what is happening in your experiences it does not mean that we are going to subjectively go after black kids 16 to 22 with dreadlocks because that's what you told us my no means means it and when we got into this those were the two biggest issues that we had to face as Toronto police where do we go to find kids that are likely to get into gangs and what do they look like and what we found through research was we found risk factors right and these are the risk factors which are there back here you can't see them all right but I'll bring them up for you and we have cards and on our website they're all in there and what these risk factors are they came from 2007 Public Safety Canada put out this publication that's been referenced worldwide and what it says is there's 36 risk factors over five different categories and the more of these risk factors that you check off the more likely you are to become a gang member and an important thing to note in that it does not mention sex it does not mention race it does not mention age and it doesn't matter it doesn't mention religion or ethnicity none of those academically have been proven to be risk factors for gang involvement so now we had an amazing way and Jason's got the cards he'll be handing him out that break it down for you but now we had an amazing way to identify kids that were on the path to gang involvement and here's the thing those risk factors they don't pop up at the same time but they carry over so the first risk factor that gets involved with a kid and I got to tell you a story and I want you as I tell you this story if I'm telling it to you and you say to me Ron that's not my experience you're wrong this isn't true I can't relate to it by all means tell me alright cuz I got a no more gangs maybe right but I'm gonna talk about these risk factors now so the first category those risk factors you got that card is take a look at family all right there's about nine risk factors in the family category and if you look at them I want you to look at it and ask yourself is there anything there that surprises you and I want you to keep in mind at the end the end result here of the person who suffers from these risk factors is gang membership or a life of crime or death you become a murderer they murder people they get involved in drug trafficking they do all these things end up in the gang home nothing really right nothing surprises you now I want you I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you a story and that story is is is one that's gonna go through these risk factors alright so I want you to imagine a single mother living in community housing all right she's in her her mid-20s when she has five kids all right in the middle kid is a problem for her she lives a community housing by her house by herself no no father around no no partner around she have five kids they live in one bedroom and she lives in another all right and every day she wakes up when she struggles and when she wakes up she notices at the age of three her middle child that horrible temper but he's very hard to deal with and what he does is he realizes that hey when I do naughty things mom pays attention to me so for the parents of the room I want you to think when your kids were that age if you have kids at age your kids going to that age when you're there washing your dishes and you hear the kids playing everything's okay right you hear what happens when you don't hear anything right so this mom's washing dishes she doesn't hear anything she goes into the room she kicks the door open and there's this kid do naughty things so mom yells at it right now this kid and this is something we looked at psychologically children operate between the ages 0 to 7 I will it's called the theta wave and their brain frequencies and it's almost a state of hypnosis and what they're doing in this 0 to 7 age category is they're gathering information not to how to succeed in life what do I need to be to survive in life it's a very primal instinct so now this kid really is looking early on and saying okay when I am doing naughty things and this is not a conscious decision he's making he's a kid realize it's very quick when I do naughty things I get what I get attention from mom all right so now this three-year-old goes in it becomes six years old then he goes to school right and he gets a school and I want you to think about that three-year-old who's now six years old they spent the first 0 to 6 years of his life craving attention realizing if I do this action I get this reward the action being negative stuff the reward being attention from mom now he goes to school who's the replacement for mom in school a teacher right and now I want to think back if you're in kindergarten if you can remember or if is yesterday for some of the younger people wasn't there that one kid in class that everyone was like listen man I want nothing to do with that guy or girl I had I had tools people in my class I still remember their names I want nothing to do with him and in this day and age same was my datings what happens that one kid they get a special teacher assigned to meeee they get the attention everybody stops we put that kid in the corner we give him specialized treatment right we try to bolster that kid up and now this kid realizes a man if I do more naughty things at school I'm getting the same attention I'm getting at home so this is a behavior that gets rewarded and now the kid at the age of 6 now all of a sudden becomes 9 years old right and now he's 9 years old and we're in the peer group risk factor category and I want you to imagine hear yourself when I was 9 I was out on my own right my parents were like get out of the house got a lot of energy come home before the street lights come on that was kind of our rule and I'd go out and now for me as a father to do kids my kids can I go anywhere without me they're hiding in the bushes all right you're stuck I got a GPS on you don't even know about it I'm gonna know everything about you guys but in a City of Toronto is it unusual to see a seven eight-year-old nine year old playing on their own for a couple hours after school all the time right now I want you to imagine that same kid three six now he's nine years old that he's out there and he's already kind of got this perspective of the world on how to survive and it's if I do naughty things I get it attention I want now he's playing outside and what type of kids is he running into similar or different same so now for the first time this nine-year-old first time finds a group of people just like him all right he says I'm head these are my people finally isolation my whole life finally I found people just like me and then from the ages 0 to 9 or sorry 9 to 15 stuff starts to take a very different term how much imagine seemed nine year old kid now we're in the individual risk factor get over 9 to 15 it's a big age jump right six years in that age I want you to imagine that same kid the age 8 or 9 he's playing outside all his friends have bikes mobility is a big thing so his mom for whatever reason get some a bike and says here you go kid you know you've been kind of good this year so here's your reward and he's been good because he's been out making friends right so they kind of get up to no good gets him a bike and what happens is his kids out there playing with friends are not light world like him it gets his bike stolen he comes home and I want you to imagine keep in mind mother of five community housing no support anywhere else manages to get her kid a bike the kid comes home at the age eight or nine it's his mom my bike got stolen what does mom say to the kid yeah angry well would you what would you say it's your fault you idiot it's your fault you know how much I did to get this bike for you and you're so careless you got the stolen that kids crushed right manages a year later mom says you know what alright he's a little better than sure I'm gonna get him another bike and that bike gets stolen again both times the police get called it's a City of Toronto man we have millions of people here probably millions of bicycles how often do we find a stolen bicycle unless it's by accident a lot of times we don't all right so they've already made two reports the police we can't do much now all of a sudden at the age of 10 11 12 this kid gets reported missing multiple times by his mother which is I haven't seen him all day I haven't seen him yesterday then this kid magically shows up all right the first time he goes missing he shows up with day later the second time we find out as police where he is we managed to find him and they're up to no good the third time they're potentially doing drugs the age of 12 all right now this kid goes home and then what do we have at 13 and 14 and 15 spike in violent crimes extortion robbery weapons offenses drug trafficking now we have a 15 year-old who's a self-admitted gang member all right now that's the individual risk category which is only four and then now this 15 year old becomes 18 and at 18 the front page of the chief would call our office and would say what does the program look like and as comfortable was for Jay and I we'd have to say there is no program and here's why I want you to look at the five risk factor categories all right we have Family School peer group individual and community now we put those as individual colors yellow black purple blue orange doesn't matter how many different combinations of five different colors can I make anybody know 3125 now that's just the categories so for me to say I have a single solution to potentially 3125 different problems I wouldn't be here right now I'd be on an island somewhere in Barbados I'd be rich I'd be a billionaire trillionaire Julianne er that's just those five categories those 36 risk factors when we look at mathematically what that looks like in terms of the potential of problems incorporated into each other it's a hundred and fifty William and I'm 90% sure I'm pronouncing that wrong but that's the number 150 with 69 zeros after it how hard is that to deal with extremely hard now once we determine that and we figured out okay this is way bigger than a personal experience this is way bigger than seeing a drug dealer and saying all people look like this or that way we had to look at social issues alright and that became a big impact point I want you to think about this when it comes down to our name and it says integrated gang prevention task force we did that on purpose our goal at the end of this is for Toronto Police Service to be not on there it's just supposed to say integrated gang prevention towns Kristin I'll tell you why that's 0 to 18 how many people are impacted by that kid how many people are seeing the risk factors from 0 to 18 and why is it that we have to let kids recruit kids and kids shoot kids and kids get into drug dealing why is it that we can tolerate it all the way up to the 18 and at that point we all get together and say enough is enough and we expect one solution for that many problems that's not the truth nor should that be the answer instead the answer has to be an integrated group so let's go over who's impacted by it 0 to 3 who's impacted where does that kid live he's home right where does he live that kid in particular community housing community housing is impacted in this particular story right kid lives in community housing they're impacted by it they're seeing it the family's there right they're seeing okay perfect single mom right now let's say that kid all the sudden he goes to school who's impacted their schools schools are impact that teachers are impacted by it right and then that kid go and new kids other families and then we go through and then we see that kid at nine and now he's out in the neighbor and who's impacted there everybody local businesses local economies local agencies everybody's impact at that point I want you to think about this too let's before we move on to the impact of stakeholder groups in certain parts of the City of Toronto that are have a heavy gang presence heavy gang involvement if I were to open up there how long would it stay in business why yeah help yeah great right so not long and if you go to any of these low equity neighborhoods in the City of Toronto and that's kind of how we ended up in different areas as we look at no low equity neighborhoods what they are is the City of Toronto divvied up the city into one hundred and forty different neighborhoods 31 of those were deemed low equitable areas or neighborhood improvement areas and the good news is come 2020 there's gonna be a ton of investment into these type of communities to get them to a standard above average to help mitigate these risk factors now for us that was perfect cuz when we did a bit of cost analysis what we know about gangs to kind of in these areas which totally supports the first risk factor being social disorganization it totally ties into that so we knew we got a place to go right so we're all impacted by it now let's look at that kid 9 to 15 goes to school commits crimes gets incarcerated so gets arrested by police were impacted goes to court they're impacted goes on probation they're impacted might get parole they're impacted right might have to go to see social service they're impacted they're back in society they're impacted so when we looked at it we said alright we can't do this by herself and we found a model in the United States called the comprehensive gang model which is the gold standard in the world and part of us doing this is this nobody in the world has been able to successfully implement that model I'll tell you why Eagle absolutely Eagle everybody who is impacted thought they had the solution what I can tell you is over the last three years when we made partnerships with people like Scott with Humber College well former University our framework from the beginning has been in order to participate you cannot have an eagle we can't do this because for us to actually do this in the City of Toronto we'd be the first place in the world to do it and not only would this solve gang problems this would solve school shootings it's called this would solve sex trafficking at a young age it would solve drug-dealing drug overdoses fentanyl it would solve a host of problems if we can just get over the ego all of us agencies organizations different levels of government just get over the ego of what can we do and what are we getting out of this and focus on what is the end result here solutions and I statements right so we have five core strategies that we really sit on in this whole massive framework sits on these five strategies sorry eagle is like like if I were to come in here and I said you know I'm the strongest in this room and I walk around a book don't you know who I am that's a bit of an ego or if I said I'm the smartest in this room that would be an eagle but I might be the truth right Jamie might have a PhD in something I have no idea about so we technically be smarter than me but thankfully it's not the case I'm the smartest guy in the room anyways so so this is the one of the five pillars that we kind of have to sit on and not pillars more of the frame workers community mobilization which is exactly what we're doing today it's coming into communities that are impacted by gangs and finding out your perspective is why as well as identifying leaders who can we support who can we grow we resources into you have way more connections in your community than I will ever have the point is we don't need to have those you need to have that what can we do to bolster you second that has opportunities provision I want you to think about that all right that's example the reason I bring that up is there's benefits there's no reason I didn't just pick because I said it's a good one this is a high paying job they have benefits they pay for school they're a franchise chain and there's a clear career development path and unless you physically see that and you're that nine-year-old kid is a potential option for you what is the expectation do we just expect that the kids and families in these areas just understand how to get a PhD and how to grow business is that a real expectation we should have if they physically don't see you do you know what exists a lot of people don't they don't if they don't see that as an option and the reality is for J and I who debrief thousands of gang members they do not travel past the city block they will stay in that block for 20 years and never know that just over the street is a brand new area so what is their scope of the world what is their scope of opportunities it's none of it right so the idea is we have some other things happening for an opportunities provision and what that is I want you to think of Detroit everybody's familiar with Detroit right and went through a massive recession everything shut down Warren Buffett who's the fourth richest man in the world came in and bought up 90% of Detroit and when all those investor friends came in and they said to him what are you doing this place is dead his response was vultures see the opportunity in death I want you to think about that this guy saw something nobody else saw he saw an opportunity everybody else gave up on this place he saw an opportunity and he brought that city back to life and for us we are expanding our branch to find economic leaders in the GTA and to say what are the opportunities that we're missing here to grow an economy on the 28th of September and one of our police divisions we've reached out to ten industry leaders in economics and business and they're being brought in for two hours to give us their insights into what are the opportunities that were all missing economically how can we bolster these areas through activity that as a law enforcement agency we have no background in I don't know how to grow an economy I don't know how to do that stuff I know how to arrest people I don't talk to people I know how to drive fast some of us know how to work out but to grow an economy we can't do that we need experts so we have experts coming in all volunteer based the other one is social intervention right and it's kind of getting into the people that are already in justice system the gang members that are already getting arrested we have organizational change in development and I want you to know what the tail end of this in about five ten minutes when we get to the very back end of this and we have the informal discussion mics off cameras are off what Jay and I do is we take this we put this into notes package and we protect everybody we want to hear what's happening with you that way nothing can come back to you if you don't want to come back to you but what we do is we take that within Toronto Police Service as well as other organizations and we say these are the perspectives we're missing these are the areas we can improve these are the gaps that we're missing so that we can improve our organization as a whole and the very last one is suppression all right and what suppression means is enforcement and make no bones about it all over the world the number one way to combat gang violence who knows what it is who wants take a guess number one way to combat gang violence you arrest them you all them accountable for what they do 100% of the time so Isis law enforcement while we might be leading this discussion in terms of what can we do together as a whole ten percent of the gang population is responsible for 100 percent of the criminal decision making the study of done of a gang in Los Angeles three hundred gang members what they did is they realized 270 of the gang members are 80% of the game had an average gang membership of one to two years and they left on their own and when they left on their own they had a whole bunch of personal reasons they were a victim of a crime their friend got shot and killed they found a girlfriend a boyfriend they moved they got on University in school and in all the cases in this particular King no one gang member faced any negative repercussions for leaving in fact they were encouraged to go the remaining 10% after the age of 21 were gang members for life and they organized 100 percent of the criminal activity in that game so we took that and that was mimicked everywhere and what we said is Toronto police is we want to identify who that 10% is to hold them accountable for what they do to hold them accountable for not recruiting other kids into gangs for not drugging young girls and forcing them into sex trafficking for not dealing drugs on the street and causing drug overdoses are doing daytime shootings we need to hold that 10% accountable but in the process when we can identify that 90 percent our goal is to get them out sooner than later if they're going to get out what can we do as a law enforcement agency to connect them with social need services to mitigate those risk factors to get them out sooner than later and we have ways of doing it but our rule in this needs to be focused on relationship development and enforcement we need to find the worst of the worst and hold them accountable now when we expanded on this and I want you to think of this as kind of the mixing pot in the mixing pot our four pillars and this is this is where we added on to this from the United States and we kind of took it to a different direction with lots of consultation our gang strategy and for the integrated group is number one is educating so it's teaching people what we've learned it's sharing insights and presenting it in a package that we can share as well as receiving information back so the education is on one-way stream for us it's the two ways it's constantly engaged in communities to find out what's happening with you so we can get educated that is a 24-hour job we need to stay up-to-date as best as possible because there are great ideas of stuff that are happening that have maximum impact actually Rico King back there he's a filmmaker from Houston Texas who did an awesome documentary called tears in the Bayou got a bro a million hits on YouTube he's up here now he's just trying to go he's filming a documentary on gangs here and and we can won't get to that group I'm so impressed with the no shoot zones you guys got to hear this this is incredible and unless we had a relationship and we're willing to listen we would never be able to implement those strategies that education is us being educated we're gonna find out from regaled what he did so we can learn how to do this here and when I mean by we I don't mean we I mean by what can we teach you to do because Rico is not a police officer but what he did in Houston is unbelievable and I'll let him speak to that the other side of this is prevention exactly what we spoke about how do we find that kid from zero to a 15 zero to 18 how do we mitigate them plug those risk factors who's the best to take care to that and then intervention intervention is a piece where it says gang prevention task force because prevention is where we want to sit but intervention is a key piece for us in law enforcement all right well I want you to think about this a that fifteen-year-old kid or when he's 13 or 12 and he gets arrest and he gets introduced in the legal system we're doing our job we're supposed to do that that's a hundred percent what we do we're not apologizing for that ever that's what we're supposed to do but when he gets brought in the legal system gets lost in translation we have elections coming up how much of that conversation is gonna be based off of prevention how much of is gonna be faced on intervention how many of them are gonna talk about the kids that are already involved in the criminal justice system and what are we gonna do for them how many then we're gonna talk about the 18 and up who have no services at all that intervention piece is crucial for us and law enforcement absolutely crucial for us to connect with jails probation and parole and we need to take care of that but that's an absolute limit and the very last one is what I spoke about is finding that 10% and holding them accountable for what they do we talked about the stakeholders being everybody involved and I'll tell ya we'll skip this these are all the groups that we've continuously had conversations with over the last two years Toronto Police Service City of Toronto Ministry of the Attorney General Ministry of Children and Youth Services Community Safety Correctional Services both the Catholic in the public school board safe and caring schools Toronto CAMH for the mental health component victim and witness protection faith-based organizations being local religious groups religious institutions employment programs and community residents businesses hospitals and the media yeah a hundred percent we engage the media why do we engage the media what picture do they paint they paint a pretty bad picture and and you know what they do they sometimes and this is something we're working on they label communities right this community is not good I want you to think if you live in one of these impacts the communities what happens to your property value it goes down if they say this is a gang impact it goes down so we need to incorporate and this is just a list of 16 we have about 25 that we're actively working with to get on the same page and this requires zero ego this requires responsibility acceptance and adopting our individual rules and being good with it we have a website we'll get to that later you can go on there the point of this was to teach you a tool unfortunately don't have an internet connection which I'm okay with but what I'll tell you is if you go on to our website it's Toronto gang prevention CA we do not track anything and what I mean might track anything some people think if I log on it's gonna tell you log that we don't track any of that stuff yeah we don't we don't track anything it's independent that's why it's on a Toronto police website if you go there it has our logo only because right now we're the ones leading the conversation the goal is and ideally another year or two that gets removed and we have a buy-in from everybody but if you go on there there's two ways it says you know how can I help one is we show you how to do it on your own in 60 seconds you have the risk factors which is the biggest part what are the things I should be looking for the second part is how do I find things to mitigate these risks or add protective factors and there's simple mapping tools City of Toronto has woman Toronto Police Service has one and the province of Ontario has one it's so easy you go in there you have your risk factors you punch in your postal code it gives you a list and a pop up of all the agencies where you live we can go and get help with it any involvement from anybody else so if you don't want to call the police to get your kid or family member or loved one that you're concerned about into needs you could do it yourself it's so easy to do the other part is if it's a little bit more complicated Jay and I just act as advisors we don't need to know the person's name we don't even ask for the name but we ask is from the public all we ask is give us the person's sex their rough age and what risk factors apply and we need some contact information not even to that person if you're gonna be the pipeline you're gonna be the conduit to say I can do this we'll build you up and let us figure out and do the legwork for you that being said what I'd like to do is guys take five ten minutes grab something we're gonna shut down everything now if we can arrange these chairs in a big circle and we can have a real conversation if you don't have time want to leave you're not comfortable by all means you can but for us the last one we did last week the best information we got out of this was in that circle and judgment-free I statements and solutions focused so on behalf of J myself the inspector all these other members of Toronto police and the community partners thank you for showing up today I encourage you to stay grab a bite to eat let's have a circle discussion we can hear for people like Rico who did some amazing things in Houston and learn how we can do it so thank you everybody hang tight grab something to eat thank you [Applause] you