Sorry to delay this update on the Christopher Husbands story. There has been a lot of backing and filling on the part of the City of Toronto, its Keystone cops, Ontario judiciary and Canadian immigration. Sorting out the truth of what happened...or didn't happen...has taken time. Here's what we know now.
Christopher Husbands is an immigrant from Guyana, who is accused of murdering a Somali immigrant in a hail of bullets at Toronto's Eaton Centre mall on Saturday afternoon. Half a dozen bystanders -- notice I didn't say innocent -- were wounded.
Both the shooter and shootee are black, hardly a surprise to anyone who knows Toronto. Both belonged to the same gang, which has been terrorizing Regent Park -- one of Toronto's "at-risk neighbourhoods" -- for some time, in spite of the diligence of the Toronto cops' "guns 'n' gangs" squad. Yet the boys in blue keep insisting the shooting was "not gang-related". Maybe Husbands and the victim were off duty.
Husbands wasn't supposed to be at the Eaton Centre, or anywhere else except work. He was under house arrest, you see, on bail on a charge of sexual assault dating from 2010. Bail was granted in spite of at least one drug conviction dating from 2008, because a couple of members of the black community said they'd keep an eye on him, make sure he didn't run away to Guyana or Jamaica -- as if -- and so on.
Did the sureties (for that's what they were) put up any money? Did they supervise Husbands as promised? Errr, apparently not. Will they be required to forfeit or pay any bond money? Will they be held to account in any way? Don't hold your breath.
But there's more. Turns out Mr. Husbands actually had a job! For more than six months he'd been working as a "counsellor" at the Stan Wadlow Clubhouse, an after-school children's centre in another "at-risk neighbourhood" -- the PC term for what Americans would call a "project".
The Stan Wadlow Clubhouse is run by, errr, the City of Toronto, which of course has a policy of requiring police background checks on all prospective employees who will be working with children. Did Husbands pass the check? Errr, no. Did he even apply for a police clearance? Well... errr... he did apply but somehow his application "fell through the cracks", and he was allowed to start work and continue working well beyond the three-month "grace period" normally allowed because, errr, doing background checks is not a high priority for Metro's finest.
Walt wonders if allowing Husbands to take the job in spite of his previous record, in spite of being on bail, in spite of not having had the background check, had anything to do with political correctness or affirmative action. Suppose the City had told Husbands he wasn't eligible? Wouldn't that have been a classic example of the "systemic racism" that all the liberal hug-a-hoodie types whine about?
The whole affair seems to be a terrible embarrassment to all concerned. The Rosedale liberals, the police, city councillors, His Largeness the Mayor, and the Toronto media are all wringing their hands over the revelation that guns and gangs are a problem in Toronto. But they steadfastly refuse to talk about the elephant in the room -- the African elephant.
Showing posts with label Eaton Centre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eaton Centre. Show all posts
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
In Toronto you can't describe a killer as a nagger
On Boxing Day, 2005, post-Christmas shoppers looked on in horror as 15-year-old Jane Creba was shot in broad daylight outside Toronto's Eaton Centre. She wasn't the intended victim, just an innocent bystander who got caught in the crossfire of a gunfight between two gangs. Those involved, a couple of whom were actually convicted years later, were, errr, gentlemen of the coloured persuasion. "Coloured", as in "black".
Walt had something to say about this just over two years ago in "Another example of racist over-policing". One of the points I was trying to make is that it's no longer politically correct to refer to the gangstas as "black" or "coloured" or the most offensive word in the English language. And you can't say "African-American" since they're almost invariably "Jamaican-Canadian". That's a fact. The police know it, anyone who's not wilfully blind knows it, and the media knows it. But...the media won't say it, because it's not PC.
Fast forward to the same locale -- the Eaton Centre -- yesterday around 6 p.m. Pandemonium erupted at the largest shopping mall in downtown Toronto after a shooter fired a hail of bullets into a food court packed with weekend shoppers. A 25-year-old man was killed. Seven other people were injured by the gunfire, and scores more crushed or trampled in the frenzied mass exodus that followed the shooting spree.
Toronto police, in a sudden and unusual display of acuity, think the was a targeted one, which caught innocent bystanders in the middle. The boys in blue [or black? Ed.] vowed to track the suspect down.
Do we have a description of the gunman? Indeed we do. A witness said the shooter was "a dark-skinned man wearing a hoody and baggy pants." That narrows it down to about 20,000 denizens of North America's most multicultural city, but hey, it's a start.
Toronto, unusually for a North American city, has no fewer than four more-or-less daily newspapers: the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and the National Post. (The latter two like to refer to themselves as "national" newspapers but are in fact written and edited -- sort of -- in Toronto.)
How many of those papers printed that description, or any reference whatsoever to the race of the perp? Just one. Three cheers for the Sun and a PC raspberry to the three who are too timid to call a spade a spade.
Walt had something to say about this just over two years ago in "Another example of racist over-policing". One of the points I was trying to make is that it's no longer politically correct to refer to the gangstas as "black" or "coloured" or the most offensive word in the English language. And you can't say "African-American" since they're almost invariably "Jamaican-Canadian". That's a fact. The police know it, anyone who's not wilfully blind knows it, and the media knows it. But...the media won't say it, because it's not PC.
Fast forward to the same locale -- the Eaton Centre -- yesterday around 6 p.m. Pandemonium erupted at the largest shopping mall in downtown Toronto after a shooter fired a hail of bullets into a food court packed with weekend shoppers. A 25-year-old man was killed. Seven other people were injured by the gunfire, and scores more crushed or trampled in the frenzied mass exodus that followed the shooting spree.
Toronto police, in a sudden and unusual display of acuity, think the was a targeted one, which caught innocent bystanders in the middle. The boys in blue [or black? Ed.] vowed to track the suspect down.
Do we have a description of the gunman? Indeed we do. A witness said the shooter was "a dark-skinned man wearing a hoody and baggy pants." That narrows it down to about 20,000 denizens of North America's most multicultural city, but hey, it's a start.
Toronto, unusually for a North American city, has no fewer than four more-or-less daily newspapers: the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and the National Post. (The latter two like to refer to themselves as "national" newspapers but are in fact written and edited -- sort of -- in Toronto.)
How many of those papers printed that description, or any reference whatsoever to the race of the perp? Just one. Three cheers for the Sun and a PC raspberry to the three who are too timid to call a spade a spade.
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