Crime and Terrorism, America, Canada and Abroad

The terrible terrorist attacks in Mumbai and Oslo have reminded me of some recent thoughts and conversations that I've had about Canada.

I was out with some girlfriends from our street, and we were discussing coming home on the TTC (metro, for those Washingtonians) late at night.  Would we walk home alone?

Let's consider the statistics for our area in Canada, first.  There have been 25 homicides in the entire Greater Toronto Area (GTA) so far this year. So little, in fact, I counted them on the map.  In our residential area, there have been 1 residential break in.  In the area next to ours, there has been 3 residential break ins.  There have been no assaults, as far as I can tell.  Toronto has been called the safest city in North America.

For fun, let's compare this to the area in Virginia where I lived, Fairfax County.  Putting in my police district into their map application, and looking only in January for Incidents against People (assault, robbery and sexual offense), there were 47 offenses in the month of January, after I moved.   As a comparison, I put in my friend's address/district who lives a little further south of me, and she had 46 incidents.  There were 22 murders in 2008, the last year I could find information for our county.  

Looking at Washington, D.C., they have had 62 homicides to date, down from the high of 300-400 homicides/year totals in the early 1990s.  There were 462 incidents of violent crime in the first month of 2011, down 17% for the same period in 2010, for the entire city.

Crime Type	1/1/2010 to 2/1/2010	01/01/2011 to 02/01/2011	% Change
Homicide	10	9	10
Sex Abuse	24	32	33
Robbery Excluding Gun	196	167	15
Robbery With Gun	115	92	20
Assault Dangerous Weapon (ADW) Excluding Gun	162	120	26
Assault Dangerous Weapon (ADW) Gun	50	42	16
Total Violent Crime	557	462	17

To compare apples to apples, though, we would have to add up all of the surrounding counties outside of Washington, D.C. to get an accurate comparison of the GTA (5.5 million people) to the greater Washington area (5.6 million).

GTA: 25 homicides YTD; in our area: a few break ins.
GWA: 62+ homicides YTD (DC + suburbs); in our area 47 violent incidents/one month

However, I think everyone understands, from these brief examples, the gross differences in safety in America and Canada.  (Can't we do better, America? Come on, BR.)  So yes, I would walk home from the TTC at night.  I  love that the buses let you off, as an unaccompanied woman, between stops at night, even though I just rode the bus for the first time the other night.  And I love that most times I don't think about terrorist attacks.

One of the first times I was back in the states, I was at the mall, and I saw a man in camo pants and a backpack shopping.  My first thought was that he had guns and bombs and was going to shoot up the place, not that he was going green and carrying his shopping bags with him.  Maybe evacuating on September 11 has something to do with this; being separated from J so soon after we were married, seeing the smoke rise from the Pentagon while driving to my mom's, being out of my building for anthrax for weeks after.  I don't have these thoughts in Toronto.  I think the prevalence of terrorism is truly a global concern, but for whatever reason, I didn't realize I don't live with that threat in the same way here until I saw the man with the backpack.  Is it the gun laws in Canada? The way they try to integrate their immigrants? I'm not sure.

In any case, I hope that we can all live in a world with more love, respect and tolerance, and less hate and fear, in whatever form it takes, and wherever you may live.