Recent gun violence in Waterloo region should spur preventive action, advocate says

In the past week and a half, there have been three shootings in Kitchener.

While the headlines often list the number of people injured, killed and arrested, Michael Parkinson wants those crimes to also spur a conversation about what can be done to prevent further gun violence in the Ontario community.

"The action that I think the community is looking for is really those efforts to prevent the harm happening in the first place, to address some of the root causes," Parkinson said in an interview.

But despite his decades of experience, Parkinson said the challenge is in finding resources to fund initiatives that are known to reduce crime and victimization across the region.

He said some of them include focusing on risk factors for young people who may be led to engage in crime.

"The earlier in life we can address those risk factors, the better for everybody, not just for the person, for the victims, but also for the community." 

Programs run out of cash

Parkinson said they have the studies to show them the way. In 2008, the province commissioned "The Roots of Youth Violence Report," which contained a number of recommendations for upstream programs rather than having a focus on the justice system.

"That report went nowhere," he said.

In Waterloo region, there's been inReach, a federally funded youth street gang prevention program that ran from 2009 to 2013, and initiatives at the neighbourhood level. The programs include strategies like midnight basketball or morning art classes.

"The phenomenon is that they run, they're successful and then they're shut down after two or three or four years after the funding runs out, and there's never the support that we need to sustain those programs," he said.

"But those are exactly the kinds of things that smart communities engage in not just today, but tomorrow and 10 years out from now."

8 shootings this year

Waterloo regional police have responded to eight shootings this year in the region. The three recent shootings were:

• July 26: Kinzie and Thaler avenues in Kitchener where there were multiple reports of gunshots made to police. Officers found evidence a firearm had been discharged in the area, but no one appeared to be injured and there were no suspects.
• July 28: Ingleside Drive in Kitchener's Victoria Hills neighbourhood where one male was shot. Two men from outside Waterloo region were arrested.
• Aug. 3: Spadina Road West and North Drive in Kitchener where a 36-year-old Kitchener man had been shot. Three suspects were seen fleeing the area.

Compared to the previous two years:

• By July 10, 2020, there were six shootings and 15 overall for the year.
• By July 25, 2019, there were 13 shootings and 21 overall for the year.

Parkinson said that in the last few years, society has had discussions on other big issues like the opioid crisis, Black Lives Matter and Indigenous rights. Now, he says, it's time for people — from the grassroots level up to all levels of government — to get serious about crime prevention and funding it.

"We're back to the basics of what are the structural determinants of health and community safety and if we're misdirecting resources to neighbourhoods where the need isn't as acute, then we're missing the opportunity," he said.

"Society's ready to have those conversations, but some of those conversations will be challenging to the status quo — that's very much related to some of those structural determinants like funding, like law, like policy. But where do you want to be in 10 years? Twenty years? Having the same discussion? I don't think so."