Toronto Eaton Centre shooting shines light on Canada’s gang problem

How did armed gangs get to be a fact of life in Canada?

They've existed in every major Canadian city for decades, smaller towns too. But they operate below the general public's radar unless there's a highly visible spasm of violence like the one that rocked Toronto on June 2.

A man walked into the Eaton Centre, the immense, busy downtown shopping mall and opened fire on a group of people in the lower-level food court.

The shots killed 24-year-old Ahmed Hassan, apparently one of the intended targets, and seriously injured a half-dozen others, including a 13-year-old boy. A second man, Nixon Nirmalendran, 22, died Monday of his wounds, according to CBC News.

Suspected shooter Christopher Husbands, 23, turned himself in to police last week. He was out on bail on another charge and supposedly under house arrest at the time of the shooting.

[Related: Eaton Centre shooting sparks debate over bail]

Toronto police aren't calling the killings gang-related but Husbands and the two dead men were all reportedly members of a neighbourhood street gang known as the Sic Thugs.

The motive for the attack appears to have been personal, not a fight over drug turf or something, so it skirts the strict police definition of gang violence. Yet it's obvious the gang culture of armed retaliation for wrongdoing played a part here.

According to an in-depth story in the Toronto Star, Husbands previously had been attacked by members of his own gang for reasons that aren't known, possibly robbery, a fight over a woman or even a gang ritual.

Sources told the Star that Hassan was involved in tying up Husbands with duct tape and torturing him in the bathtub of an empty public-housing apartment last February.

The attack apparently was followed by an outburst of violence, including several gunfights, in the Regent Park neighbourhood where the Sic Thugs operate.

The gang structure, if you can call it that, in Toronto seems quite fluid. Groups gang up and break up, sometimes through internecine conflict or when they're busted up by police.

According to the Star, the Sic Thugs grew out of Regent Park's Point Blank Soldiers, which was linked to the Boxing Day 2005 shooting death of 15-year-old Jane Creba outside the Eaton Centre.

Toronto's gangs are smaller and more loosely organized than they were 20 years ago, the Globe and Mail reported last week.

Police have been successful in breaking up some of the biggest gangs, which often had ties to international organized crime, forcing gangsters keep a lower profile. But those who survivor seem more prone to gun violence, thanks to ready access to illegal firearms, largely from the United States.

One former gang member said guns were relatively rare in the 1990s.

"Guys would duke it out in the parking lot, or a knife may get pulled," Andrew Bacchus told the Globe. "The odd guy might have a gun. … But today, guns are a bigger problem than any gang. There's just too many damn guns out there."

Among major Canadian cities, Toronto had the fourth-highest per-capita rate of gang-related homicides, behind Winnipeg, Vancouver and Montreal, in 2010. Gang deaths peaked in 2003 at 35, with subsequent years ranging from 14 to 30 killings, the Globe reported.

With exceptions like the Eaton Centre shootings, violence is a problem mainly in the city's poorer neighbourhoods, among young men who have nothing meaningful to do.

"For these kids, there's nothing else," Segun Akinsanya, a youth mentor, told the Globe. "If you want to classify it, call it opportunists without any opportunities."

Compare that with Vancouver, where gang activity often involves the children of prosperous middle-class families and can cut across ethnic and neighbourhood boundaries.

Police in British Columbia estimate about 120 gangs operate in the province, according to CBC News.

Some are highly organized and control lucrative drug connections to the United States and Mexico. When there's violence, it's usually tied to challenges over drug turf.

What they have in common with their Toronto counterparts is ready access to deadly firearms.

The Eaton Centre shooting made international headlines, including in Guyana, the South American country where Husbands is from.

The giant mall is one of the city's best known tourist attractions, Reuters noted in its followup to the shooting.

"If it had not involved bystanders and a shopping mall, I don't think we'd be talking about it," Sandra Bucerius, a criminology professor at the University of Toronto, told the news service.