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posted February 7, 2006 from the Jan-Feb 06 newsletter
I. COB COURTYARD VANDALISM: INVITATION TO CITY LAWYERS TO ACT
At about two a.m. last Hallowe’en, park neighbour and friend Bruce Whitaker was awakened by the sound of cracking and smashing in the park. He got up and looked, and called the police. Two cruisers happened to be in the neighborhood already and came within minutes. They arrested a young person under 18 for vandalizing the cob courtyard that was built by many neighborhood people under Georgie Donais’ direction all last summer. With some large stones, the young man had destroyed half of artist Susan Szenes intricate mosaic counter, all the plumbing fixtures on the public health sinks, and three-quarters of the tiles painted for the cob courtyard by park children. He had also made many holes in the walls. The cob walls are much too strong to break down, but the many holes in the plaster would give access to winter snow and rain (and so there is some interior water penetration now).
Our first step was to hire summer cob-builder foreperson Heidrun Gabel-Koepff to record all the damage for the court, and to fix as many of the plaster holes as possible. Our second step was to try and get involved in the court case. Georgie and many others thought it would be best if the young man was sentenced to do community service hours fixing up the cob damage. That could connect him to the community in a more positive way at the same time. (Most park youth are also park-boosters, and this park has an unusually low amount of damage through vandalism.)
But no matter where we asked, we couldn’t find out anything about the court case. In frustration, we turned to the City’s legal department, to see if they could gain standing at the trial. That’s when we found out that the city does not use their lawyers to follow up on vandalism even when an arrest is made. Their reason: it would not be cost-effective.
Many park friends disagree. If the police know that the City will not go to court for vandalism, why would the police take the trouble to investigate such acts? They would see it as a waste of their time.
Beyond that, news gets around. Many youth know that the City doesn’t follow up in vandalism arrests. So why should they worry about doing antisocial acts in public space?
Since concern about antisocial acts by youth is currently running high in Toronto, we contacted City Councillor Adam Giambrone and the mayor’s office. The councillor said he is looking into changing policy but we are asking for a meeting with city lawyers, so that park staff and cob builders can explain our thinking to them. Watch the newsletter for follow-up.
posted February 7, 2006 from the Jan-Feb 06 newsletter
II. COB COURTYARD VANDALISM: YOUNG OFFENDER DIVERSION
Since the City (owner of the park and everything in it) took no role in contacting the courts about the youth who vandalized the cob courtyard, other ways had to be found. After much searching and phone tag by park staff, Jutta Mason went to the youth court at 311 Jarvis Street. She walked up and down the office corridors and looked at door signs until she found the youth’s probation worker. Then they had a long talk.
It turned out that the probation worker lives in this area. She had watched the cob courtyard being built and had brought her whole family over to see it at Thanksgiving. (Toronto is a small town!) Not only that – the probation worker had read in the December Park Newsletter, posted on the rink shed, that we were frustrated because we couldn’t contact the court about the cob vandalism.
The probation worker knew how much community effort had gone into the cob courtyard. So she had told the young man, after he formally accepted responsibility for the damage in the park last November, that he would not be charged if he went and talked to the cob builders, and also helped to repair the damage. But there was a snag – before the young man could do any repair work, young offender diversion procedure says there first has to be a “talking circle” on the model of what native people do (they call it a “healing circle”). Everyone with a specific concern about the incident, including the young man’s friends and the cob courtyard builders, could be involved. The agency employed to set up and lead this circle is called Peacebuilders International. They are based in St. James Town and Regent Park, and they hadn’t contacted us because they had never heard of Dufferin Grove Park and didn’t know how to find us.
So we invited their worker to the park and had a good talk with him. Now we hope the preparations for direct contact are going ahead. More news next month.