YOU DRIVE, THEY'LL SHOOT

Welcome to Toronto, lots of people, lots of traffic, lots of things to do.

Weather can vary from extremely hot to unpleasantly cold but lately, the climate around here, it's been a little shooty

Shooty and blue. Blue uniform that is. As in, the police

Last year here we had a cop standing in the middle of an intersection in Cabbagetown shooting at a coyote. He missed, by the way. Then we had the cop who emptied his pistol and his tazer at a kid on a stopped streetcar. Unfortunately, tragically, he did not miss

Yeh, our cops sure do like to shoot. When faced with the reality that during encounters with mentally stable and lightly armed (ie a knife or a hammer) people, a study found that the TO constabulary used just a tad too much deadly force.The cops came up with a solution: Let's find things that we can shoot that may not be quite as deadly But hey, we still want to shoot

But I don't want to be unfair here, the police in my city are not all about shooting their Glocks. They also love to drive their cars. Really fast. And chase shit

A few years back when we lived on Hillmount St in our nice quiet Jewish hood, some young punks robbed somebody and drove away. Huzzah said the cops and gave chase. They chased so fast and ardently that the bad guys mounted a curb on the sidewalk about 40 feet west of our house, slid sideways right past our lawn and breached their SUV on the other side of the house, crashing into our neighbour as he pulled out of his driveway. Neighbour was shook up but OK. But the scumbags bailed and took off on foot. Oh, huzzah and tally ho! Cops gave chase on foot and now we had a bunch of people running through the back yards with guns in their hands

Shooty shooty

Earlier this year a couple of hoods did a little smash and grab, mounted their getaway vehicles and sped off through Regent Park. And you guessed it .. tally ho! Only, the cops were huaazhing in their cruisers and the bad guys? Um they were on bikes. Not Harleys. Bikes. Bicycles. Chains, gears, little metal bells. Homeboys tried to elude the cars by rolling across a brand new community basketball court. Cops stayed in their cars, busted through a chain link fence and went all Audy Murphy (in Hell Bent for Leather) across the basketball court, fucking it up

Huzzah

Where is all this coming from? Well, from yesterday actually. I have a client dog down in the Distillery District. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Distillery District is, well, an old distillery dating from Toronto's Victorian past, a huge complex of cobble stone lanes, red brick Gothic buildings and black shuttered limestone edifices. It's quite elaborate and quite beautiful. And unlike most of Toronto's history it was not paved over into a parking lot or immediately filled with terribly banal condo high rises

The Distillery has been preserved as public space with shops, pubs, bakeries and a theatre; concerts and events of all kinds are staged there. It is indeed surrounded by coma inducing condo's but the bones and the heart of the place has been maintained for us to enjoy

And lots of people enjoy it. It is a major tourist attraction, south of Front Street, not far from the Lake. Recently it was right beside the Athlete's Village (the ugliest of all condo's in the cities, as if Ugly Condo was a Pan Am event) for the Pan Am Games

It always seems to be busy but naturaly it is teeming on a hot summer day. As it was the other day. My client dog Gracie lives right beside the main entrance to the Distillery, on Mill St, a short block away from Parliment

That intersection itself is always busy. There are parking lots there where people park to walk across the street into the district. There is a school there, its fenced playground looking towards the Victorian structures. I enter Mill Street from Trinity, looking down towards Parliment; and what I saw that day was the yellow caution tape fluttering in the balmy breeze

I had just missed, by about 30 minutes, a very chasey shooty day in my city.

Some dude stole a car. The cops somehow actually got on to him as he sped along in his little grey Toyota. Huzzah! Tally ho! Several cruisers gave chase. Right up Parliment; teeming, pedestrian laden Parliment. Lots of cars here too, and a lane cut off by road work. And kids playing over there in the school yard

Perfect place, the cops seem to conclude, to block in the stolen car and force him up against the curb. I missed the event itself but I've seen the video. Two, perhaps three cruisers jam the car in, wedging it between the two cop cars Cops jump out, pistols in hand

Home boy's car is not moving, it ain't going nowhere. And there are three cops, two right by the driver door. So huzzah you motherfuckers, Cop Three jumps over to the front of the car, staring at the windshield and what does our fine constable do? Aims his semi auto at the hood of the stolen car and empties the mag into it

Yeh he shoots the car. Pop pop pop. Ten or more rounds into the hood of the car. Yes, these are soft nosed 9 mm rounds, less likely to ricochet but there are people all over the street. There are kids fleeing across the school yard. And there are his fellow officers right there by the passenger door

Shooty shooty

The official explaination for this is that the cop wanted to disable the stolen vehicle. Two points. One, that car wasn't going anywhere. And two, many many mechanics have agreed that where the cop was shooting was not going to "disable" that car. Probably he shot up the battery

But you can see him, crouched in the classic Weaver stance, two hands on the gun, just blasting away. As the other cops yanked open the driver's door, Dirty Harry is actually ejecting his expended clip and slapping in a fresh one

Yeh. There's a Sequeway parked over there. Never know when you may to shoot that too

So, a gorgeous hot sultry sunny September day, one of Toronto's most quaint tourist locations, locals and tourists alike enjoying the light breeze skirling off of the Lake ...

But the weather suddenly changed. Dark blue skies, with a high degree of shootiness