Those streets have been tense since Sunday night’s grenade attack and police have publicly conceded retaliations are inevitable. The Police’s Youth Coordinator Douglas Hyde, who works with at-risk youths, discussed the gravity of this new development.
Douglas Hyde, Police Youth Coordinator
“To be honest Keith, if there is one gun in the street it is a matter of concern to all of us who work in the specific work, much less 15. It is a major concern to all of us, those who work on the preventative side, those who work in the intervention and even the police officers themselves who work on the interdiction side of it. It is a major concern for us. I think for us as a community, we need to make sure that we all play a part in sending this message to these guys who take advantage of these opportunities.
We’ve noticed that weapons are in high demand. We’ve noticed that a lot of these guys or these youths in terms of what they want, they would want a gun instead of wanting a book or a job. And so one gun again means a lot in one neighbourhood. Of course guns are in high demand, specifically now that a grenade was blown in the past couple days. Everybody wants to have a gun for protection, if that is the way you want to look at it. From a grenade to a gun, definitely everybody would want it and right now I know in the streets that it is in high demand. These young persons want to have a gun now, feeling that they need to protect themselves.”
Trying to defuse some of the tension, this afternoon Youth for the Future and the Police Department held a peace rally and we’ll take you there later in this newscast.
