Iraq for Christmas, Cameras in the streets

It wouldn't be my first choice for a holiday trip. An American kid from Florida who speaks no Arabic decided to fly to his homeland and visit Bagdad to immerse himself in the culture for a school paper. Read about his journey here.

In other not so happy news you may have heard about the Boxing Day shootings in Toronto. Rival gangs fired at each other on the crowded streets of Young street on boxing day. Several bystanders were injured. One 15 year old girl was killed on the scene. The first man arrested is only 20 years old and a 17 year old was arrested with him. This has triggered many things including a push for more gun control and cameras in the streets. I think the real problem is being ignored. Firstly, the gun was stolen and registered guns were not the cause of this shooting. Paul Martin is proposing to abolish hand-guns in the country. I think this is a good step to reduce the number of guns available but it won't remove them from the streets. Illegal guns will still be accessible. Secondly, a quote from this article concerns me.

"Maybe it's time for there to be a comprehensive program of video surveillance to help police in their investigation."

This reminds me a little of 1984. Placing cameras in the streets will not stop gang violence. If someone has the lack of care to shoot into a crowd of shoppers on boxing day they don't care about getting caught on tape. Even if they do they'll just wear a hood to conceal their identity. Imagine putting cameras in people's homes to reduce domestic violence. But with quotes like the following I'm not surprised people will grasp at anything to reduce the likelyhood of this happening again.

"It was a strange chaotic feeling," he said. "I saw people running and screaming all over the place. I heard people yelling for their children, one lady yelling the name of her child over and over again. . . . She couldn't find him."

In cases like this it's important to think about the factors involved in the incident which lead to the event. Why were these kids in a gang? What environment caused them to feel the need to attack each other? I grew up in an area with a lot of violence in the schools and on the streets. I believe much of the problem comes from poverty, violence in the home, fear of retribution for turning to the authorities and lack of support from the authorities. Instead of responding to violence after it happens we should look at alternatives to avoid the situation escalating to this level.