Late 1980s and Early 1990s
In the late 1980s, gangs in Toronto were becoming increasingly violent. This coincided with the arrival of crack cocaine in the city, which caused more gun violence to occur in low-income neighbourhoods. At the same time, Toronto police were under scrutiny for a series of shootings of unarmed Black men, beginning in 1988. In 1991, Toronto experienced its most violent year with 89 murders, 16 of which were linked to drug wars involving rival gangs.
On May 4, 1992, there were riots on Yonge Street, which followed peaceful protesting of a fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by Toronto police (the eighth such shooting in the last four years, and fourth fatal one). Later that year, local activist Dudley Laws claimed that police bias against blacks was worse in Toronto than in Los Angeles.
Read more about this topic: Crime In Toronto
Famous quotes containing the words late and/or early:
“Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)