NEW POLICE STRATEGY DESIGNED TO BLANKET HIGH-VIOLENCE AREAS

TORONTO -- Shivering on Parkdale's Queen Street West on a raw Friday
night, Eric the drug addict looks to be in a pile of trouble. A
break-and-enter artist and long-time junkie who has spent time behind
bars for theft, he is well known to police. Now he is surrounded by
cops and they are not smiling.

Eric watches resignedly as one of his glass crack pipes is crunched
underfoot. A gap-toothed white man in his late 20s, he scoffs at the
police attention.

"You got something else there, Eric?" Constable Richard Nimmo asks.
And sure enough, another pipe appears from within Eric's
multi-layered baggy clothing, along with the X-Acto utility knife he
uses to cut up his small rocks of crack cocaine, and the stub of a
hand-rolled cigarette of some kind.

By the end of his 10-minute encounter with the police force's new
Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), Eric has been
thoroughly checked out.

He shambles away, free to go.

Why? Because despite Eric's misdeeds, there are no warrants out for
his arrest, no bail conditions being violated and -- above all -- he
has no history of violence or known gang connections.

In one sense, Eric is the kind of suspect the police are not looking
for, at least not tonight.

Launched in mid-January, the aggressive TAVIS initiative is a direct
response to last year's surge of gun violence.

Last year's violence produced 52 gun-related homicides city-wide, all
but one involving a handgun and was largely rooted in Toronto's
flourishing gang culture. (Add to that dozens of woundings, many
unreported because of the scrutiny they attract.)

On Friday evening, similar scenes to the one involving Eric play out
over the evening as the TAVIS officers, all in uniform, make the
rounds of bars, strip joints, pool halls and coffee shops,
introducing themselves, seeing who's around and filling out contact
forms that record many of the stop-and-ask encounters.

Prepped by local officers who know intimately the streets of a
particular division, such as 14 Division's bicycle-riding Constable
Nimmo, this latest crime-fighting initiative deploys three 18-officer
teams who move around the city in small groups, blanketing the
20-plus most high-risk neighbourhoods for about a week at a time.

"The message we're putting out is that we're not putting up with this
violence any more," says Staff-Sgt Brian Redick, supervisor of the
in-their-face program, which will be introduced to the Toronto Police
Services Board in a briefing this week.

"We're telling violent offenders that we're here and that we're going
to keep coming back."

That might mean arresting people sought on warrants for a crime, or
for unfinished court business.

It might entail scattering a knot of drug dealers gathered in a
high-rise stairwell.

The TAVIS mandate also includes responding en masse to a particular
incident -- most likely a shooting --flooding an area, knocking on doors.

The main targets, however, are people convicted of violent offences
who are violating court-imposed conditions such as a curfew, a ban on
the consumption of alcohol and drugs or an order to stay clear of
certain addresses or certain people.

If picked up, those individuals can expect a swift trip to the
nearest police station and fresh charges.

TAVIS's $5-million budget is part of a $51-million packet of
anti-violence initiatives announced last month by Premier Dalton
McGuinty, designed primarily to stem gang activity.

An extra 31 prosecutors are also to be hired, working under the same
roof as the police force's gun and gangs task force. As well, three
judges will be assigned to preside over special, high-tech courtrooms
where gang prosecutions will take place.

When crime fell in New York City during the 1990s, police claimed
credit for enforcing a so-called broken-window policy, whereby even
small infractions of the law such as small-scale drug possession were
stepped upon, hard. But the success of that approach may have been
overstated. After all, crime rates simultaneously dropped in most
other big U.S. cities

The Toronto Police Service's focus on violence in particular, rather
than lawbreakers in general, is different.

Because these new flying-squad teams comprise officers from across
the city, advance input from specialist police units, such as the
drug squad or gun and gangs, is key.

So too is the expertise of the local Community Response Unit -- the
officers most plugged-in to the neighbourhood.

"We know where the crack houses are, we know who the bad guys are, so
this works," Constable Nimmo says.

As police made their rounds on Friday, it looked at times like overkill.

"You guys planning on starting a war or something?" a bystander
mocked as a dozen cops marched into a seedy high-rise on Tyndall Avenue.

"Nah, we want to prevent one," was the reply.

At midnight the battered Waverly Hotel on Spadina Avenue looked
similarly overcrowded with firepower, as two impoverished transients
were questioned, then released.

Once assured that no crisis was afoot, however, most people in
Parkdale appeared pleased to see so many uniforms. "Go for it, more
power to you guys," shouted a mother of four who lives in the Tyndall
Avenue building and says a relative was recently shot at a nearby booze can.

Nick Bakoias, manager of the House of Lancaster strip club on Bloor
Street, was also content.

"The bad guys around here seem to have gone -- gone into the back of
cruisers, I guess," he said. "I've noticed a real change in the last
few weeks."

David Birch, assistant manager at the LCBO outlet on Brock Street,
said extra officers make his staff "feel a lot safer. . . . We deal
with a lot of irate people."

Since the program began on Jan. 16, the results, measured by arrests,
have been modest, yielding about 60 arrests and the seizure of about
a dozen handguns, chiefly replicas.

On this particular evening, which is bitterly cold, just three people
get arrested, all on fairly minor charges: an 18-year-old woman
sought on arrest warrants for a property offence and failing to
appear in court; a visitor from St Lucia, aged 31, who has overstayed
his visa; a 28-year-old man who lifted a pack of cigarettes from a
corner store.

Then it's on to a dingy pool hall at College and Spadina, where
hip-hop music blares and marijuana smoke hangs in the air.

As the police pour in, lively conversations ensue. Not a fist is
raised, but there are loud accusations of harassment and racism, even
though three of the officers are black.

"I want every single guy's badge number," one denizen shouts.

And like Eric the addict, Mohammed S. might seem to be in the crosshairs.

He too has an X-Acto knife, together with a half-empty mickey of rum,
a wooden marijuana stash box and no ID except for a health card that
belongs to someone else.

"Why are you doing this, what's your problem?" he yells at Constable
Lou Tellis.

"This is my job," the officer replies. "To gather intel, figure out
who's here and what's going on."

Mohammed is allowed to go, minus some of his possessions, and when it
transpires that nobody is going to be arrested, the mood in the pool
hall marginally improves.

But not by much.

"We did him a favour," Constable Tellis says later.

"He'll still probably file a complaint."