Violent crime affects our sense of community

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/03/2023 (893 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CANADA is a vast land, but it can often feel very small.

When someone posted a video from downtown Vancouver on social media earlier this week, I instantly recognized the intersection from when I lived and worked in that city. Then my heart sank: the very graphic video was of someone who was stabbed to death in broad daylight in front of a Starbucks.

Horrifyingly, the victim’s wife and toddler daughter were standing just a few feet away when he was assaulted and collapsed in a pool of his own blood.

We are being inundated with stomach-churning stories of violent crime in our once-quiet, peaceable northern kingdom. It’s hard not to take notice.

This past week, a Quebec provincial police officer was stabbed and killed while attempting to arrest a man accused of uttering threats.

Two days earlier, 16-year-old Gabriel Magalhaes was stabbed to death in an unprovoked, random attack while waiting for the subway in Toronto.

Magalhaes was killed in Toronto’s Peele Station. Again, Canada feels small: I know that station well from the two years my wife and I lived in Toronto.

Winnipeggers are all too familiar with violent crime. In the past year, we have seen a fatal stabbing in the Millennium Library; a Ukrainian refugee stabbed in the neck for the offence of bumping into his assailant and being unable to apologize in English; and a shooting at the Red River Ex that saw a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old who was caught in the crossfire sent to hospital.

Of course, I’m familiar with all three locations: like many other parents, I regularly take my kid to all of them. But after the last violent year, I’ve hesitated at the thought of doing so.

Stories of machete (and other) attacks on Winnipeg buses have created a similar apprehension. In February, Peter Marius Radulescu was convicted in the unprovoked stabbing of a woman in her 70s. In January, a teenager was attacked while waiting for the bus, with three assailants knocking her to the ground, stomping on her and ripping hair from her head. That same month, a father and his 10-year-old son were assaulted on the bus.

And on and on.

Similarly, Vancouverites are wondering whether it is safe to go downtown. Many Torontonians are, for the first time, doubting whether the subway is safe for them and their kids.

For many Canadians, the fear is that communities are no longer safe places to raise families.

Crime, especially violent crime, has horrendous direct consequences for victims. But we ought not forget that it also has significant indirect consequences for society as a whole.

As violence and disorder proliferate, public spaces become less and less welcoming. Our worlds shrink. We become more and more likely to experience community by peering through the blinds with our front doors locked.

Apprehension about crime and disorder mean public spaces that should be enjoyed by all are frequented only by those who have little choice other than to go.

The response of some to these concerns is to point to crime statistics, which may demonstrate that the actual incidence of this or that criminal charge is actually falling. But this misses the point. Risk-averse people, especially parents, are unlikely to be convinced by dry statistics.

Indeed, in shaping perceptions of own our safety, crime insidiously narrows the horizons of what we can collectively achieve.

Everyone, for example, wants a healthy and vibrant network of libraries here in Winnipeg. This often leads to entirely correct calls for the city to better fund the library.

But the reality is nothing will induce Winnipeggers to take advantage of the library if their safety while visiting is not guaranteed. This is especially true for parents.

In response to the recent death in the Millennium Library, city officials reinstalled scanners to ensure knives and other weapons could not be smuggled in. The measures seem to be working, as 49 knives, among other weapons, were seized between Jan. 23 and Feb. 19.

That’s a good first step to ensuring people feel safe when visiting the library.

The same is true of public transit. One cannot expect ridership to go anywhere other than down if people are reading about horrific attacks on the bus. Recent discussions between the provincial and municipal governments about the possibility of placing peace officers on buses could go some way to addressing that.

Crime matters because, no matter where in Canada it happens, we empathize with the victims. We place ourselves in the shoes of our fellow citizens and at the locations of the crimes, and govern ourselves accordingly.

If Winnipeggers want our city to be a community and not simply the place where we live, the most important thing our leaders can do to achieve this is to act decisively to stem the current violent crime wave.

Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.