Is it just me, or does there seem to be a significant increase in violence in the province recently?
Not just any violence, either. Ugly, brutal, careless violence. Indiscriminate and without meaning in many cases.
And it’s getting younger. Just yesterday a 15 year-old was gunned down in front of his school by two 17 year olds. That’s no longer a rarity. A dozen or so teenaged girls are charged with the swarming murder of a homeless man. Teenagers involved in armed carjackings and pharmacy robberies.
How about that 65 year-old guy out walking his dog in Lloydtown, Ontario the other day? A white SUV races by him on the deserted country road, and I guess the gentlemen “gestured” at the vehicle, which probably means you-know-what. The SUV wheels around and the guy in the front passenger seat fires thirteen rounds, striking the dog-walker several times.
People are attacking people on public transit. Punching, slashing, setting on fire. Sometimes race-related, sometimes not.
Walk the streets of any city today and see that mental health treatment in this province has reached the level where transients are a regular part of the urban landscape. By government policy, people are released with nowhere to go.
These are not exclusively big-city issues. Poverty and mental health issues exist in smaller communities as well, and therefore some of the negative by-products associated with these will be, and are, present in smaller communities like ours.
This doesn’t have to happen. It’s a human-made problem, so there’s such a thing as a human-made solution. But sadly, we just can’t seem to rise to it.
Maybe because it would cost money.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 