Crime

Critics of the police and tougher bail and sentencing laws to combat violent crime have two approaches to the release of annual statistics on crime.

But they both end up in the same place.

Toronto police have charged the suspect wanted in connection with an “unprovoked” stabbing of a TTC electrical worker.

Police identified the suspect as Anthony Christopher David McLaughlin on Saturday.

In a news release on Sunday, Toronto police said the 36-year-old turned himself in on Saturday.

Toronto police say one suspect is in custody after an officer was shot while investigating an e-bike theft in Toronto’s downtown core..

Speaking to reporters on Thursday morning, Deputy Chief Lauren Pogue said officers were called to the city’s St. James Town neighbourhood at around 3:20 a.m. for reports of a robbery involving an e-bike.

Officers located a suspect and a brief foot pursuit ensued.

It didn’t take much of a drop in crime rates for the cadre of experts opposing tighter bail rules and tougher laws to declare that, surprise, tighter bail rules and tougher laws are not needed.

Canadians have been duped into believing that crime is a big problem, and hoodwinked into supporting the federal Liberals’ (kinda) tough-on-crime crackdown. Or so the story goes. The proof? Statistics Canada’s annual release of crime statistics, which found that crime rates dropped in 2025. What’s more, the crime severity index declined, as did the violent crime severity index.

Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw says that two 18-year-old males have been arrested in connection with a deadly shooting at Salsa on St. Clair last month.

He says that both are charged with 37 offences, including two counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder.

Shaquan Quashie, 25, and Cesar Vernaza, 20, were killed and multiple others were injured following an exchange of gunfire in the middle of the festival on July 11.

New twist – no exchange of fire, one gun only used.

Ana Paula Kitterhing De Sousa never missed a text message from her daughter.

But when Raquel Almeida Margulies texted a habitual “sweet dreams, mama,” at 10:28 p.m. on Oct. 15, 2023, the text was left curiously unanswered.

A few days before York Region police officers thwarted an alleged assassination of a Toronto jail official, someone using the alias “Danny Phantom” allegedly texted two pictures to a contact called “LeBron James.”

The first was a screenshot of a Ministry of Transportation database search showing the jail official’s home address. The second was a photo of the official’s red pickup truck.

“If the car there need the hit squad,” Phantom wrote after sending the pictures.

The thefts are shockingly brazen. Videos shared by Toronto police on Wednesday show multiple suspects walking into stores, loading up bags, suitcases and shopping carts with items and walking out, seemingly without fear of consequence.

Despite the cavalier nature of the alleged crimes, there were indeed consequences.

Toronto police announced over 500 arrests and 4,000 charges in a years-long, ongoing retail theft probe that Supt. Ron Taverner said involves “repeat and prolific offenders” with ties to larger organized crime groups.

In 1900, William Randolph Hearst decided he would expand his newspaper empire with the Chicago American.

His top lieutenants, Solomon Carvalho, warned Hearst that the Windy City was a tough town and they’d almost certainly “have to shoot their way in.”

Hearst responded: “Take all the ammunition you’ll need.”

Two men cross paths inside a Toronto restaurant. Both are armed. Both are with friends.

Within minutes, the encounter escalates. Bullets fly inside the eatery on St. Clair Avenue West. A 23-year-old named Nakhari Henry-Robinson is killed.

Months later, Regent Park rapper Ridge “Biiig Rax” Kazumba is found guilty of second-degree murder in the August 2023 shooting. The now 29-year-old had just left a session at a nearby recording studio when he encountered Henry-Robinson at the restaurant.