Business owners in trendy Toronto district struggle with crime surge
Business owners in trendy Toronto district struggle with crime surge
Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood is grappling with a surge in crime that has left many business owners feeling abandoned by city authorities
By Alexandra Keeler
Cesario Ginjo, owner of Sweetie Pie coffee shop and bakery on Queen Street West in Toronto, recently faced a series of robberies that left his employees traumatized. During one incident, the perpetrator entered Ginjo’s store with his pants around his ankles, threatened the female employees and instructed them to hide in the back while he stole multiple iPads.
Police initially seemed indifferent to the crimes and attributed them to the proximity of a nearby supervised drug consumption site, Ginjo says.
It wasn’t until Ginjo organized a news conference in his store, and MP Kevin Vuong put in a call to the unit commander of the local police division, that the suspect was arrested.
Once lauded by Vogue magazine as “the second coolest neighbourhood on the planet,” Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood is now grappling with a surge in crime that has left many small business owners feeling abandoned by city authorities. Owners like Ginjo say their calls for more policing and resources to address the root causes of crime and addiction are being ignored.
Crime in the West Queen West neighbourhood was up 41 per cent year-to-date as of June 23, versus the same period in 2023, according to the Toronto Police Service’s Public Safety Data Portal. This rise contrasts with a previous trend of declining crime incidents from 2019 to 2023.
Lan (Lanny) Liu, who owns The Mission Eatery on Queen Street West, said her café has been subject to multiple robberies and disrupted almost weekly by aggressive individuals who appear to be on drugs. “I can see it. When you talk to them, they don’t look at you,” she said.
Despite the frequency of these occurrences, she says police do not respond even when she follows their reporting protocols and provides video footage.
“No one contacted me. Nothing happened.”
Faced with this inaction, The Mission Eatery has moved its closing time from 10:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the cost of foregone income.
Izzy Bernardo, acting inspector of the Toronto Police Service’s 14 Division, which encompasses West Queen West, stressed the importance of comparing current crime statistics to 2019, due to the pandemic’s impact from 2020 to 2022.
“Businesses were closed and most people were home or working remotely,” he said. “This had an impact on crime and we saw a significant drop in crime across the board.”
“Assaults have increased since 2019,” Bernardo said. “Everything else seems to be the same as 2019, if not slightly less. We will continue to address crime and disorder using various innovative strategies including community engagement.”
Toronto’s public safety data portal indicates that, across the city, there were 52,600 incidents of major crime in 2023, versus 43,000 in 2019, driven largely by an increase in auto theft. Incidents of assault, sexual violence and major theft were also up in this period. Incidents of break and enter, homicide and robbery were down.
Within the police service’s 14 Division, the data portal indicates there were 3,104 total incidents in 2023, versus 3,159 in 2019.
‘Do the basics first’
For more than a decade, Rob Sysak has been executive director of West Queen West’s Business Improvement Area, a non-governmental organization focused on enhancing the vitality and attractiveness of the neighbourhood.
Sysak blames the surge in drug use and theft on lax policing and underinvestment by the City of Toronto. In January 2024, Toronto had only 37 more police officers than it had in 1999, despite significant population growth and a 35 per cent rise in emergency calls, according to the Toronto police service’s own social media feed.
“It’s great that you’ve got all these [harm reduction] programs, but if you don’t have the resources to make them happen?” Sysak said. “The city needs to do the basics first.”
There are several harm reduction programs and safe injection sites in the Queen West area that support individuals struggling with addiction. One prominent facility is the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre, which has been providing essential harm reduction services — including a supervised consumption site — since 2018.
“During Covid, our small businesses had a lot of break-ins, they had a lot of issues, and we were pretty much abandoned during that time,” said Djanka Gajdel, a local business owner and co-chair of the West Queen West Business Improvement Area.
Gajdel says there is a disconnect between the community and local politicians, who she believes are not taking the neighbourhood’s crime and addiction issues seriously enough.
“To date, I have yet to see — municipality or provincially — any long-term strategy established for anyone who is in recovery,” she said.
Toronto Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik and her media team did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A strict binary
Doc Von Lichtenberg, 68, has been operating his shop, Doc’s Leathers and Motorcycle Gear, on Queen Street West for more than 35 years. Although he and his staff have long encountered patients from the nearby Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, he says the number of incidents has increased recently, particularly in the past year.
In his own business, he’s dealt with drug use within the store, loitering, theft, vandalism, indecent exposure and vomit and feces in the doorways. He has responded by installing bars on entry points, alarms, cameras and window protections.
“Why do my employees have to be trained to physically fight?” said Von Lichtenberg, who says he has encouraged his employees to pursue thieves.
Von Lichtenberg said police will often not make arrests for petty crimes, like vandalism and theft.
The government is placing an unfair and costly burden on shopkeepers to deal with crime and safety issues, he says. “The only reason my business has survived is because I’ve taken on the job of securing the building and the customers that are in it.”
Laila Bellony, harm reduction manager at the Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre’s safe consumption site, is skeptical of calls for more policing to deal with the neighbourhood’s issues. The presence of officers can deter clients who have warrants out for their arrest from seeking health services, she says.
“[Harm reduction workers] operate on a case-by-case basis more often than not, and there’s a lot of shades of gray for us,” she said. “Police services cannot afford that. There’s the law and then there’s outside of the law, so they work on a very strict binary.”
Public concern about how supervised consumption sites manage crime has grown since last summer, after a harm reduction worker from Toronto’s South Riverdale Community Health Centre was charged with hiding a man who allegedly shot a young mother near the centre’s consumption site. Resident and business owners from that community have launched a class action lawsuit, claiming the centre and governmental authorities have failed to take their public safety concerns seriously.
Bellony rejects the suggestion that safe consumption sites are a safe harbour for criminals.
“We are not a respite for someone who does something untoward in the community to just come inside and hide,” she said.
She also notes that some businesses have had positive experiences with Parkdale’s health centre, and have supported it with donations and partnerships.
“We’re really trying to normalize and make ourselves a part of the development of the neighbourhood, so that the neighbourhood doesn’t develop in one direction, where you have the drugs on this side and the affluents on that side,” said Bellony.
Community officers
Business owners and harm reduction workers are in agreement on some points.
Sysak, Gajdel and Bellony all say that a multifaceted approach is needed to address the interconnected issues of crime, addiction and homelessness in West Queen West. They also say that housing solutions are critical.
“There are tons of empty units, commercial spaces on the outskirts of the city,” said Gajdel. “We could … [build] incredible places so people have housing immediately.”
They are also in favour of the city hiring more Neighbourhood Community Officers — individuals employed by the Toronto Police Service to act as trauma-informed intermediaries between the police and community. As of December 2023, the city’s community officer program covered 56 of the city’s 158 designated neighbourhoods.
Sysak also praised Toronto’s 2-1-1 helpline, which provides assistance for mental health situations that police officers are not well-suited to address.
These initiatives are a start, but Liu says there is a long way to go before the neighbourhood can feel both safe and inclusive.
“We are supposed to be open for everyone,” she said, reflecting on a time when she welcomed the homeless to sit and use her bathroom. “It’s hard to have to start judging people by how they look, but it is to protect us and our other customers.”