Stopping youth violence in Winnipeg

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/07/2023 (805 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 15-year-old, a 14-year-old, now a 12-year-old.

These young people have been charged with manslaughter and assault with a weapon and nobody seems upset — at least, not upset enough to ask for solutions. Have we accepted murder and assault by children as normal?

A group of young teens swarmed a young man at the Millennium Library. The young man died after he was stabbed. A 15-year-old has been charged with manslaughter. A group of people leaving a concert at the Canada Life Centre were harassed by a group of teenagers. When an older teen intervened, he was swarmed and killed. A 14-year-old has been charged with manslaughter.

The latest news is a group of children and youths in downtown Winnipeg confronted two older teens and demanded their property. Even though they gave up their property, a 12-year-old has been charged with assault with a weapon after one of the group carved up the victim’s face with a machete. We use the term ‘ganglet’ to describe the fluid gathering of children and youth armed with knives and bear spray and occasionally guns who have nothing else to do but wander the streets waiting for a victim.

It is not normal for teenagers to commit murder and assault with weapons. However, we seem to be so inured to this type of violence that society is not rising up and demanding action, actions that will prevent our children from killing and maiming other children.

There are many actions that are required to limit, or hopefully even erase children committing murder and assault but I will only mention two.

First, inner-city recreation.

We have had two fiscally conservative mayors, Sam Katz, and Brian Bowman. During their time in office, recreation in the inner city has diminished to the point of almost disappearing. Hockey rinks closed, community centres almost empty, and kids forming ganglets instead of playing football or doing gymnastics. When I was an inner-city recreation director for the City of Winnipeg, we had teams of big tough kids that challenged for city championships. I had 50 young girls coming to gymnastics every week and all they needed was a black leotard. The deputy chief of police was driving around my area, trying to find out why juvenile crime had just about disappeared.

There are social service agencies like MaMawi, Boys and Girls Clubs and Inner City Youth Alive and individuals like Mark Chipman, that are struggling to keep recreation alive. However there are very few teams left in the inner city. We need a massive increase in resources starting with professional recreation directors, who can organize the teams and activities that these kids can choose as an alternative to violent crime.

The Tri Government Task Force On Illicit Drugs, also known as the meth task force, includes recommendations on the need for improved recreation. The City of Winnipeg, in spite of being one of the sponsors of the task force, has done nothing to improve inner city recreation.

We now have a new mayor who comes from the same background as the two previous mayors. It will be interesting to see if he has the same disdain for inner-city recreation as his predecessors or recognizes the horrible cost of short changing inner-city recreation. The City of Winnipeg has a preliminary budget of over $80 million to build a new rec centre in South Winnipeg with a salary budget probably in the order of half a million dollars. So far, there has been no initiative to improve recreation in the inner city.

Would politicians’ commitment to crime prevention through basic recreation programs change if all the hockey moms and soccer dads demanded that inner-city kids get the same opportunity to play sports as their kids have? I know suburban parents care, since many have phoned me asking what can they do.

Second, the Community Support unit of the police:

While basic recreation is a foundational effort needed to prevent youth crime, the police have a major role to play in preventing juvenile crime. In North Point Douglas, when we see a ganglet forming, we notify the Community Support Unit of the Winnipeg Police Service. The community is responsible to let the police know where the ganglet meets.

Experienced, community minded police officers track down the ganglet and talk to them. Our experience has been that the ganglet dissolves and the problem of broken windows and kids being bearsprayed fades away.

We need every community to be able to contact their Community Support Unit whenever they see a potentially dangerous group of kids gathering and committing minor crimes. The Winnipeg Police Service must train sufficient police officers so that whenever a ganglet is reported, police meet with them quickly and follow up to ensure that they do not continue to be involved in criminal activity. Police headquarters must cease diverting the Community Support Unit officers for every parade and value them as a frontline crime prevention team.

These are two easy to implement solutions to a growing problem of child/youth violent crime in Winnipeg.

It is totally unacceptable for a wonderful city like Winnipeg to accept child violent crime as normal and to spend $80 million for recreation in the wealthier areas, while starving the inner city of opportunities for children to be involved in positive activities.

Serious violence by children and youth, as Winnipeg has been experiencing, is only normal if the population accepts it as normal. It can be prevented but prevention requires Winnipeggers to demand preventative action now.

Sel Burrows is a member of the Order of Manitoba and the coordinator of Point Powerline.