Now it’s cops playing race card

If one person shoots off a gun, that’s an individual problem, but if a whole lot of people in similar circumstances do the same thing, that’s called social breakdown and requires a fine-tuned response. But how fine-tuned is mass police targeting?

That’s a question for Chief Bill Blair.

Last month the province renewed its commitment to the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) unit made up of officer teams deployed to identified areas, but you’ll notice that not many community agencies are cheering. It seems that the people actually trying to extricate young men from gang culture in troubled ’hoods find TAVIS a drag on their efforts.

Toronto police TAVIS stop of four teens ends in arrests, captured on video

Four teenaged men — three with braces in place to straighten smiles — drape their sprouting frames over chairs in a stuffy second-floor room overlooking a common area in the Neptune Dr. public housing complex, where a police encounter they had went dangerously wrong.

No, they agree, they will never again try to exercise their rights when confronted by police.