January, 2001

Going to court

A 1998 community crime prevention grant for Dufferin Grove Park from Ontario's Ministry of the Solicitor-General is just in its last stages. As part of this grant, recreation supervisor Tino DeCastro asked Lily Weston and Jutta Mason to follow a parks-related case through the courts. Last January, a rink guard at our nearby Wallace-Emerson rink was shot in the leg with a pellet gun. (A pellet gunshot hurts but doesn't go very deep, unless it hits the eye.) A large number of young men were present but the shot was fired from behind, so the rink guard didn't know who shot him. However, when the police arrived, one of the young men was found with a pellet gun in his possession. He also turned out to be in violation of a previous probation order prohibiting him from being on the rink property. (It's not the practice of either court or police to make community centre staff aware of such a ban, so the young man had been frequently at the rink with his friends, without the staff being aware that he was banned.) The group of young men been intimidating staff and users at Wallace-Emerson Rink for some years, and this pellet-gun incident made things even worse.

The young man was in jail for 14 days before he got bail. Since then, Lily and Jutta went to ten (10) two-minute court appearances, about one a month, in the "set-date" court, Room 111, at Old City Hall. Each of the ten times the setting of a court date was postponed again, for a large variety of reasons. Then two weeks ago the young man pleaded guilty to possession of a weapon and breach of probation and was sentenced to do some community hours.

Besides going to court and watching the stream of people who are processed (and postponed) there, Lily and Jutta went to see various judges, probation officers, crown attorneys, and lawyers. We wanted to promote the general priniciple that offenses committed in public space have a particular effect on neighbourhoods and should get some special attention. We suggested that if community service hours are ordered as a consequence of an offense committed in a park, whenever possible the community service placement should also be in a park. That way the offender would make amends for damage and threats, and the park staff could form a (hopefully constructive) relationship with the offender that might result in some learning and some loyalty.

Although some of the people in the justice system with whom we spoke were very kind, and they thought our ideas made some sense, we never had the feeling that there was any real point of entry where community concerns could get "standing." The crown said we should work more closely with police, the police said we should wait for the trials, lawyers didn't have time to talk to us, and judges said that they won't specify a placement when they sentence offenders, but that we should ask the probation people. The probation officer in this case now told us we should have made our requests prior to sentencing, which we had done but the crown didn't bring up our requests at the trial….around and around in circles we went. Our community-as-victim "impact statements" in this case seem to have been largely ignored. Most recently, the probation officer told us that it's really up to the Salvation Army (as the government's community-service-hours broker) to decide where the hours are served, and that licking envelopes at the downtown Red Cross is just as appropriate as having the offender work with us in the park. The important thing is doing the math: making sure that the right number of hours are served.

We disagree, of course, but despite our many appointments and our close following of this case, it's unclear whether our efforts to have offenders in public space serve their community service hours in a way that relates to their offense - and to the community where the offense took place - will bear fruit anywhere. This is particularly unfortunate because the offender in this case (like many offenders with whom we work at the park) shows good qualities as well as troubles, and the links park staff make with young people like him can have longer-term good consequences all round. No new program is needed here, but it looks like the turf in the justice system is too sharply divided at present to make intelligent use of the community resources already in place.

The subject of the legal system and safety in public space will be the third in the series of CELOS booklets, put out with the help of the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor-General and the G.H.Wood Foundation. Entitled, Whose conflict is it, anyway?, the booklet is scheduled to come out in spring. As well, Jacqueline Peeters, a final-year law student who was very involved at Dufferin Grove Park four years ago, is researching law pertaining to public space. If any park users have experience in this area, please call her at 534-8123, or e-mail her at j.peeters@utoronto.ca.