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Toronto, Police Chief Mark Saunders is vowing to make building public trust one of his priorities as he begins his first full calendar year as Toronto’s top cop.
Saunders, who took over as police chief in April following the departure of Bill Blair, made the comment to reporters on Thursday morning after attending an event to kick off Crimestoppers month at Toronto Police Headquarters on College Street.
“Public trust is something we need to work on and that is a North American phenomenon right now,” he said. “I talk to different agencies across North America and internationally and we are getting the same thing. Public trust is something that is key. It is something that will encourage people to make phone calls and to gives us tips, clues and evidence to solve cases.”
Saunders had a turbulent first eight months in charge of the TPS as police faced mounting public criticism for the practice of carding and saw a spike in violence this summer and in the waning days of 2015.
Overall, shootings were also up dramatically in 2015 with 395 recorded occurrences compared to 243 the year before. A total of 164 of those shootings did not result in injury (up 215 per cent from 2014), however 133 did (up 75 per cent from 2014).
It should be noted that fatal shootings were down 3.7 per cent in 2015 while the total number of homicides was also down slightly, going from 57 to 56.
“You look at the year-end and you do the comparatives and you see that year to year things are relatively consistent with numbers,” Saunders contended Thursday. “When we have these spikes we put the resources in place to look after them.”
Some of the more notable incidents of violence in Toronto in 2015 included a brazen shooting at Muzik nightclub that left two people dead in August and a spate of fatal shootings in the city’s west end in December that prompted Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti to openly muse about calling in the army.
Saunders was asked about the apparent spike in violence on Thursday but dismissed any speculation that the city is experiencing an increase in crime.
“You are the one saying that there is this spike and that things are going crazy,” he told one reporter. “It is not going crazy. Do the comparative with our city and any other city that has 2.8 million plus people and the numbers clearly indicate that Toronto is an incredibly safe city. We are policing as best we can with the resources and there is no need to call in the army yet. It is a safe city and members of the community do cooperate.”
