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National Post DATE: 2005.05.16 EDITION: Toronto / Late SECTION: Toronto PAGE: A10 BYLINE: Nicholas Kohler SOURCE: National Post NOTE: nkohler@nationalpost.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Law of the gun on Toronto's mean streets: Weapons-related homicides continue to rise as black-market pistols get ever easier to buy: 'Respect' and' power' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There's nothing like the feeling, says Gyasi Ferdinand, of carrying a gun. "You are on top of the world," recalls Mr. Ferdinand, who sold crack before he was shot four times in the gut on Toronto's streets, then found God and became a Pentecostal minister. “It doesn't matter what people say or do, 'cause you have that urgency -- that you can kill them if you want to," the 30-year-old says. "They can't do you nothing." Mr. Ferdinand is considering what goes through the minds of the young Toronto men who are increasingly engaging in open-air gunplay, no matter the time of day or the number of innocents surrounding their quarry. "They have that, it's a power," he says, a faint shot of Trinidad still in his voice after more than two decades in Toronto. " 'Cause guns are created to kill -- there's no two ways about it." A late afternoon gunfight that erupted last month on Yonge Street, just opposite the Eaton Centre, saw three wounded, including two pedestrians out to enjoy a sunny spring day of shopping. In November, an argument between strangers caused gunfire to tear through a crowded Jane Street bus. One 11-year-old girl who ran for cover didn't even realize a bullet had passed through one side of her forehead and out the other. Last month, Livvette Moore, a 25-year-old mother of four, died after an early morning shootout involving four different gunmen in a North York club crammed with more than 200 people. Six others were wounded. "People don't really know how to fire guns good -- so innocent people is going to get shot," says Mr. Ferdinand. "Nobody goes to target range and practice." Police have made arrests in only one of those three shootings (the Yonge Street incident, where two men face charges of attempted murder). The difficulty facing police is the random nature of much of the gunplay. But, in his soft-spoken manner, Detective Sergeant Gary Keys, head of the Toronto police gun and gang task force, rejects the notion the city's increasingly brazen acts of gun violence are random. Indeed, the shootings fit a definite pattern: a gangland mentality imported from American pop culture that has taken root in the Toronto asphalt, says Det. Sgt. Keys. "They have a way of praising people like that," Mr. Ferdinand, who made as much as $2,000 a night peddling crack, agrees. "They idolize people like [rapper] 50 Cent, who got shot, like, you know? Nine times." But there was nothing random about what happened to alter the life of Gyasi Ferdinand. Some days, he recalls, he would slip the 9-mm Beretta that gave him the street name of J9 into his waist as he left for the streets, never knowing just when he would come across a rival dealer or old foe. "I'm looking for him, he's looking for me," he says of the men he sought. "Whoever catch who first is dead. That's street life." Then one spring night in 2000, he took four bullets through the window of a parked car. The gunman made sure to tap the glass with the barrel so his victim would know who dealt the blows. Mr. Ferdinand flatlined twice as emergency doctors worked on his bleeding gut. He lost a kidney, part of his liver, and 15 centimetres of his large intestine. Blood rushed to his gut, abandoning his fingers and toes for the bullet wounds; even now he does not have full use of his hands and he walks slow and deliberate. According to the code of the streets, Mr. Ferdinand had wronged his shooter -- a common theme in an arena where matters of honour dominate disputes. While guns blaze normally over territorial disputes among dealers or during drug rips -- when rivals rob each other of product -- gunplay can also be ignited over a thing as trivial as someone stepping on a pair of expensive shoes. "They perceive respect to be control over other people," Det. Sgt. Keys says. "And the fact that they have a firearm -- they demand respect." Police have identified roughly 1,500 gang members in the GTA, belonging to 70 or 80 organizations ranging from high-level crime groups like the now-disbanded Malvern Crew, to ramshackle arrangements that grow out of neighbourhood school friendships. Of the 65 murders that rocked Toronto in 2003, for example, roughly 31 involved guns; 27 of those were gang-related. This year, gun-related murders currently represent about 60% of the city's homicides. Over the past five years, the percentage of gun-related homicides in Toronto have hovered at 50%, well above the national average of 30% over the past 10 years. Fuelling the gunfire is the easy availability of guns in Toronto, say both Mr. Ferdinand and Det. Sgt. Keys. Between 50% and 60% of the black-market firearms in neighbourhoods like Mr. Ferdinand's old Regent Park stamping grounds are smuggled from the U.S., in piecemeal fashion three or four guns at a time. The rest, like Mr. Ferdinand's 9mm, originate in break and enters. Buying an illegal gun, too, can be as easy as scoring weed, as some dealers forgo crack and cocaine for the lucrative gun market. Indeed, their availability, Mr. Ferdinand says, is determined by who you know and how much you're willing to spend. "Somebody would ask, 'Do you know where I can get a machine?' " says Mr. Ferdinand, noting that a clean gun -- one that hasn't been involved in a past crime -- could cost in his day as much as $1,500. As for Gyasi Ferdinand, he has transformed his near-death ordeal, his recovery and his discovery of God into a new life, one probed and celebrated in a National Film Board documentary by Eric Geringas called Cheating Death. The film airs this fall on TVO. Mr. Ferdinand hasn't seen his shooter since the night five years ago when he heard the metal of the gun against his window. "I pray for him," Mr. Ferdinand says of the shooter. "Bible say that you must love your enemy. Him shooting me is the best thing ever happened to me." ALLAN ROCK’S PROMISES ON GUN SMUGGLING JANUARY 6,
2003 – TORONTO POLICE CHIEF JULIAN FANTINO ON CJML HAMILTON –
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