Straight up, I'm not at all being cute, I moved to Toronto in December and so far the only cops I've ever seen are the cops that are protecting construction sites. Really. And people told me oh it's just winter we have beat cops in the summer... uhm, it's the summer now and I still don't see any beat cops. No clue what is going on here but it's extremely weird.
This city is totally out of control and needs a lot of help. I don't know how it got so out of control, but nobody seems to be in control of setting a tone and tenor here. I've had worse things happen to me and seen worse things happening on the street than I ever, ever saw in SF, and that's saying something.
Not sure where you're from originally, but crime rates have been historically pretty damned low here. The kind of street level routine enforcement that people might be used to in American cities hasn't typically been a thing.
Now... since COVID, hyper inflation in housing prices + opiate epidemic, this has changed. At least here in Hamilton which has always been a bit rougher, but not directly "unsafe" -- now I don't feel very safe downtown.
Though most of the crime seems either petty or internal conflicts, and not a lot of violent crime against strangers.
I had someone try to open my backpack and take my laptop out at young and dundas last week waiting for the walk light. The only reason I noticed was because it got lighter and thank god someone else notice and grabbed him. On Sunday morning I was walking down front st near union station and someone had started a bonfire with about 30 lighters and was offering up some type of substance to the folks sitting with him while some young german sounding boys took photos and discussed, 3 weeks ago I was walking down college towards Bathurst and someone came out of nowhere half naked with a GIANT FUCKING WHIP and started whipping the ground around me shouting at me. wtf is going on?
Social breakdown. No access to housing. Opiate epidemic. Hyper alienation. Mental health crisis.
This kind of crap was happening in "outlier" cities around Toronto for quite a few years before it got into Toronto proper. Downtown Hamilton, Brantford, London, etc. have been problem zones for years on account of broken down working class people with no prospects and (I'm guessing) opiate or meth addictions. COVID only made it worse.
Every public park here in Hamilton has tents all over, basically permanent.
The way to start to solve this is to give people housing.
