ABOVE: Sean Mallen profiles TAVIS, one of the city’s most high-profile police divisions.
TORONTO – Just after dusk, a group of police officers, some on bikes, some walking rolls up to a Jamestown housing complex near Rexdale.
They aren’t investigating a crime: This is a walkabout.
The Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy – or TAVIS – is one of the police force’s most high-profile divisions. Among other things, this is the face of Toronto Police in some of the city’s most troubled neighbourhoods.
Global News reporter Sean Mallen went on a ride-along with a TAVIS unit on October 15.
TAVIS Sgt. Kane Worth says they travel in groups of at least five for safety.
But the hefty presence can backfire. The security officers in the community housing complex tells them they won’t witness any bad behaviour: Officers’ cars and guns scare off any would-be criminals.
“They see your cars out front. So you’re not going to see anybody right now. They’re somewhere else watching,” said the security officer, who did not give his name.
Get daily National news
The TAVIS unit is here due to a history of violent shootings. Suleiman Ali and Warsame Ali were killed behind a building on Jamestown Crescent in September 2012. No arrests have been made.
TAVIS was set up in 2006 after the so-called ‘year of the gun’ to combat gangs, drugs and the influx of illegal weapons in Toronto. Since then, it has led to more than 19,000 arrests and the seizure of more than 1,200 guns, police say.
TAVIS officers played a role in the June raids connected to Project Traveller. Those raids, targeting a Dixon Road street gang resulted in more than 40 arrests and the seizure of $570,000 in cash and 42 firearms.
But TAVIS officers don’t solely patrol the high-crime areas of Jane-Finch, Rexdale or Regent Park. Instead, they shift their efforts to different neighbourhoods as they are needed.
The TAVIS model of policing focuses on building relationships with people in at-risk neighbourhoods.
“That’s’ something we struggle with all the time,” Constable Rogers Mayers said. “Encouraging communities, residents, witnesses to come forward, to come forward confidently.”
Throughout the night that Mallen tailed the police officers as they moved through the neighbourhood there was no violent takedowns or major crimes. As TAVIS officers patrolled the quiet, dark streets of Jamestown much of the interaction they had with residents was short conversation.
Worth claims he “speaks to a lot of residents that are happy to see us.”
Following the Danzig Street shooting in June 2012, one of the deadliest shootings in the city’s history, Premier Dalton McGuinty, Police Chief Bill Blair and Mayor Rob Ford met at Queen’s Park and made a commitment to continue funding the program.
But the program has also been criticized by some members of the communities it tries to protect.
Analysis done by Toronto Star reporters on the rate at which people were stopped and questioned in Toronto, found that they were black males were stopped disproportionately more often than any other group.
But Chief Blair was adamant in a recent Toronto Police Services Board meeting that the TAVIS unit is effective.
Crime rates in Toronto have fallen since 2006, the year TAVIS was introduced.
Comments
Comments closed.
Due to the sensitive and/or legal subject matter of some of the content on globalnews.ca, we reserve the ability to disable comments from time to time.
Please see our Commenting Policy for more.