Jeff Zimmer
Copy Editor
@copyoverlord
For those who missed it, on February 18 there was a shooting in the York community. A shot was fired inside an apartment residence on Assiniboine Road, and fortunately, the grad student inside was unharmed.
What bothers me is the lack of security we have in our community. For a campus of almost 65,000—a population big enough to rival small towns—we don’t have a police department on site.
Yorkton, a tiny city located in east-central Saskatchewan with a population of roughly 17,200, has a better source of protection than students here; they have the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) nearby. It’s honestly surprising that York doesn’t have a detachment of Toronto police, given our notoriously problematic location near Jane and Finch.
With an active police force on campus, we would surely see a dip in crime. I acknowledge that we have the York security patrolling the entire community alone, but they cannot do this alone. With the added extension site of Toronto police, they would offer far more presence to our community.
Let’s face it, we’re basically a city with a shopping mall, but even in my hometown of Mississauga, we have a police station—it’s located within the shopping centre of Meadowvale. Then there’s another two in the area to boot. So why can’t our community benefit from another form of protection?
We have the emergency towers dotting the campus and York security, and if we don’t have Batman or any similar vigilante, we should most definitely have a Toronto police branch on site.
I don’t fear many things, but as an individual incapable of stopping bullets with my face, I have to come to terms with the fact that I’m going to fear a person with a 12-gauge Remington 870 shotgun. Unless York offers bulletproof vests to students with our tuition, I regretfully fear that without vigilantes or armed security, our rather large community will continue to suffer through its ongoing trend of crime.
