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Etobicoke is turning into a giant slum. People say Toronto isn't dangerous simply because they walk a couple blocks downtown by the business district 1pm on a sunday.. the thing is.. downtown isn't dangerous. The slums are located in the outer boroughs, for example (basically any neighbourhood that lies on Eglinton Rd West in Etobicoke, Rexdale, most hoods that lay along Finch Av in North York, and most of Scarborough). If you go downtown hoping for some trouble, you won't find it..
Ah yes, good old Toronto Canada where nothing bad ever happens to women walking home alone at night. Of course ignore the fact (UN statistics) that Canada has twice the amount of rape crimes per capita than the US, and if you look at Toronto you can see that is a pretty big problem there as well. But of course you are in Toronto Canada so women shouldn't exercise caution because they are miles away from the big bad States!
Rape and Sexual Assault can not always be directly compared as the definitions will vary between the two countries. Canada may also have higher reporting of date-rape incidents. A random stranger raping someone at knifepoint is not a day-to-day concern (with certain examples like Paul Bernardo notwithstanding).
Etobicoke is turning into a giant slum. People say Toronto isn't dangerous simply because they walk a couple blocks downtown by the business district 1pm on a sunday.. the thing is.. downtown isn't dangerous. The slums are located in the outer boroughs, for example (basically any neighbourhood that lies on Eglinton Rd West in Etobicoke, Rexdale, most hoods that lay along Finch Av in North York, and most of Scarborough). If you go downtown hoping for some trouble, you won't find it..
Yeah, only the strong survive in The Kingway & Humber Valley.
Nothing ever happens downtown.. The club district is soooooooooo quiet.
Rape and Sexual Assault can not always be directly compared as the definitions will vary between the two countries. Canada may also have higher reporting of date-rape incidents. A random stranger raping someone at knifepoint is not a day-to-day concern (with certain examples like Paul Bernardo notwithstanding).
I am not an attorney so I cannot compare the law in both countries, but typically Ontario sex crime laws are viewed as lax compared to most US states, so with a tougher law the US would naturally have more convictions.
As far as a higher reporting rate, there is no way to measure that as I am sure you can agree.
I did not say that it is a daily concern, just that there are quite a few major US cities that have a lower sexual assault rate than Toronto and other major Canadian cities. A woman in any major city should exercise caution and seeing them walk alone at night is hardly a measure of safety.
My point was that something like "sexual touching" may be considered sexual assault in Canada but fail to be included in U.S. rape statistics. Canada's statistics may include a lot more than just the act of rape itself.
Safe as in you won't get gunned down or robbed in braod day light yes. Safe as in you won't get your house broken into or your car stolen, nope.
At least Canadian crooks are significantly less likely to be armed with a firearm because there will be an assumption that the homeowner will not be armed either.
A city is never a cohesive generalization. The reason Toronto has a low crime rate on paper is because all of the street crime is focused in very specific areas. Which are several degrees more crime-intense than the rest of the city and compare very easily to similar areas across North America. It's a very polarized place. Serious crime and street crime is also much more endemic to gangs, which are quite prevalent, as opposed to "freelancers", when you look at the whole city.
In other words, the bad areas are not pushovers and the gangs are not soft. It is simply that there are less bad areas and a lower percentage of the population is affected by them.
A simple analysis of murder rates in areas of the West End/Etobicoke shows that they are often high. The Keele and Eglinton intersection (Keelesdale-Eglinton West neighborhood) has had 6 known homicides between this summer and the last. That's an area of only 10 000 people.
If you go looking for trouble you'll find it. Walking alone in some areas in Toronto trouble will come especially during night. Most of the city is safe its only certain areas aren't good to walk around if you do not know anybody there. In daylight, mostly all of Toronto is safe to walk around, unless you go right into the apartment complexes that are known to have a rough history then I could almost guarantee you somebody will come up to you. But thats only tiny areas in the city. These hoods are all spread out but I'd say there are more of these hoods in neighbourhoods like Rexdale, Jane & Finch, the former city of York with areas like Eglinton West, Weston, Mount Dennis, Jane, and Oakwood, Malvern, and West Hill/Cedarbrae in Scarborough. I'd say those neighbourhoods have the largest gang presence. The poor areas near downtown has trouble but most don't deal with gangs, just crackheads and crazy people like Parkdale and Moss Park. Toronto's downtown I would say is very safe compared to other cities. The hoods are all far away from downtown so most of the time you won't see any gang activity down there.
What I notice Toronto does also is that they mix up good wealthy neighbourhoods with poor areas like how Regent Park is right by Cabbagetown, the houses surrounding Jane & Finch and Rexdale are quite large, Malvern is surrounded by suburban looking houses, Lawrence Heights is surrounded by big houses with big Jewish populations, Eglinton/Oakwood is beside Forest Hill, etc.
I think this makes Toronto a safer place than others because other cities have their poor areas all bunched up together. Also, most of the people in the city are friendly so that makes not much crime, but still people out there that don't really care of their actions and also crazy people or crackheads that don't think right either. But thats expected in a big city like Toronto.
Toronto learned from Jane & Finch and from Regent Park that too many low-income housing units in one area causes trouble. Regent Park is being completely redesigned and we'll have to wait and see if that improves things. There are low income units at otherwise posh areas like Yonge and Eglinton that you would never know had government subsidized rent. I think some of those buildings even had a mix of people paying subsidized or non-subsidized rent.
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