Hamilton police have backed away from their weekend statement that young black men appear responsible for many of the city's gang-related gun crimes

Sharon Boase:

Deputy Chief Tom Marlor Sunday appealed to leaders of the city's African-Canadian community for help after a shootout at an east-end bar left three people wounded. He said that most of the people involved in a recent spate of shootings have been young black men.

Police Chief Brian Mullan contradicted his deputy yesterday, saying gang members are as diverse as the United Nations and Hamilton police will reach out to all ethnic and racial communities to help them solve the problem of gun violence.

"To say that this is a black issue is totally inaccurate," Mullan told The Spectator yesterday. "This is a community issue and it's going to take our entire community to solve it."

Two black men remain in serious condition in hospital after a shoot-out in an east end bar early Saturday which injured an innocent bystander. The two men are both suspects and victims.

"Overall, this is a youth issue but, being black myself, I believe the black community has its problems," said Frederick Dryden, founder and executive director of Liberty Youth Centre, which ministers to at-risk and incarcerated youths with mentorship and Bible study.

While many of the young people Dryden visits in jail come from unstable homelives, he said a preponderance of black youths he sees there come from single-parent homes, have no male role model and often have male relatives in jail.

Further, young black men with few opportunities face intense pressure to conform to images portrayed in rap music, he added.

"I pray to God I get to the level some day where I can challenge some of these rap artists and movie producers, because they're the ones pushing this garbage on these young people."

The root cause of gangs and gang activity can hardly be pinned on black youth, said Lloyd Turner, program co-ordinator for the Afro-Canadian Caribbean Association of Hamilton.

"But where we're concerned, is if we are a part of the problem, then we'd better start to try to clean up our part and hope that all of the communities will do the same so we can have a safer Hamilton. A safer Ontario, a safer Canada," he said.

Part of the problem is a lack of discipline at home, Turner added, something black parents have complained to him about in the past. He said child protection authorities are too quick to remove children from a home where they face corporal punishment.

"The government should stay out of peoples' homes, unless there is direct abuse," he said. "But most of what they call abuse has nothing to do with abuse but has to do with discipline.

"These days, the child is conditioned to call the law on the parents if the parents even talk to them hard."

Erin Dufresne works with street youths at Living Rock Ministries. She said youths who belong to visible minorities and have an accent face discrimination every day, whether it's losing out on a job or an apartment.

"When an incident happens, they're very quick to try to downplay the ethnic element and will attribute it to their age," Dufresne said. "People aren't sure how to address racism and it kind of gets put on a back burner."

Bill DeLisser takes exception to the idea that only black youths are involved with guns and gangs.

"The burden must not be put at the foot of the vulnerable members of the Hamilton black community," said DeLisser, president of the Jamaica Foundation of Hamilton and director of the Canadian African Heritage Coalition.

"There are many root causes that are contributing to the social decay in our city, and society in general, which can only be solved by all of us working together."

What struck David Lane about this weekend's shootings was the two men suspected of shooting each other are not what he would consider youths but, at 21 and 28, are adults.

"My perception is they're people who have been committed to a certain way of life or behaviour for a period of time," said Lane, executive director of the John Howard Society.

"It becomes a lot more complex to deal with someone 21 or 28, in an established pattern of life, than a teen."

Dufresne said the violence and gang activity plaguing young blacks in Toronto is twisting peoples' perception of the black community.

"I think what happens -- and it's just horrible -- but people get this perception that black communities are just more violent, that black people are just more violent - but you just absolutely can't frame it like that."

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