Mayoral candidate Brad Bradford is criticizing a top Toronto police official for categorizing the city as “extremely safe” in remarks that were made mere hours after a deadly shooting at the Salsa on St. Clair festival over the weekend.
Deputy Chief Frank Barredo told reporters on Saturday that Toronto remains “one of the safest cities in the world” despite the brazen shooting that killed two people and injured five others earlier that night.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Bradford slammed the remarks as “tone deaf” as he took issue with the way city officials, including police brass, responded to the shooting.
“I was watching the news conference like every other Torontonian and I thought it was appalling to come out and say that things are extremely safe minutes after we have had a mass shooting on St. Clair (Avenue),” Bradford said.
Barredo told reporters on Saturday night that while Toronto is “extremely safe,” it is “not immune to some of the things that happen globally.”
The deputy chief went on to describe the Salsa on St. Clair shooting as “tragic and very concerning” but suggested that police had “talented and trained people dealing with it.”
Speaking with reporters on Tuesday, Bradford said that the comments were simply “the wrong message” to convey moments after thousands of Torontonians had to run to safety when gunfire erupted between two groups.
“That is the wrong message and I don’t agree with that and that is not how people feel,” he said. “We need leadership whether it is at the Toronto police or city hall or any of our agencies that recognize that people don’t feel safe in Toronto and telling them what to think is not the right response.”
There were three separate shootings in Toronto over the weekend, including the violence along St. Clair Avenue.
During a news conference on Monday, Police Chief Myron Demkiw noted that shootings in Toronto are still down 26 per cent compared to this time last year.
Demkiw, however, acknowledged that when “a brazen shooting occurs in a public setting it understandably shakes the sense of safety and security that Torontonians expect and deserve.”
He then went on to explain that statistics “don’t mean that much” in the wake of violence similar to what the city witnessed this weekend.
“It really doesn’t speak to the heart of the matters, which is how people feel. And it’s very important for us to acknowledge that a weekend like this shakes our city,” he said. “There’s people who have lost loved ones. There are people who are injured in ways that are going to affect them for the rest of their lives. And at that moment, the statistics don’t mean that much. What matters is how people feel and what we do to restore the sense of safety and security.”
Bradford isn’t the only one who has criticized Barredo’s remarks.
One of the organizers of Salsa on St. Clair, TLN Media Group, released a statement on Monday in which they said it was “maddening” to see the deputy chief and other officials “normalize mass shootings at family festivals in Toronto.” TLN said it will discontinue its support of the festival, unless the city provides “concrete commitments” to enhance policing and security.
For his part Bradford said that he believes the response from police and city hall officials following the shooting has been “disingenuous” and has relied too heavily on numbers that don’t tell the full story.
Bradford also suggested that the political leadership at city hall “hides behind their numbers instead of standing behind their work,” though he did not cite specific examples.
CP24 has reached out to Mayor Olivia Chow’s office for a response but has not yet heard back.
“More than a dozen people were shot in Toronto this weekend, three of them are dead, and the message to the people who ran for their lives, who were shot, to the folks caught up in the stampede of panic was look at the numbers,” Bradford said Tuesday. “I am not here to debate numbers with anybody. I am glad that shootings are going down - the numbers should be zero – but people can’t conduct their lives according to statistics. Torontonians don’t live in a spreadsheet of numbers. Nobody is checking the dashboard before they walk out the door with their kid. They ask one simple question: do I feel safe?”
No arrests have been made following the Saturday night shooting.
