The false reassurance of a 'targeted' shooting

A 46-year-old is dead and a seven-year-old badly wounded police say in both cases, someone with a gun and a plan pulled the trigger, but hit the wrong person.

Both of these crimes were "targeted."

It's a term police use when someone is hunting down a specific person or location.

It's a signal to the public that, in each case,the danger is within the city's underbelly the predator and the prey are both usually tied to gang activity, organized crime, narcotics trade or other parts of the criminal world.

"We use the term targeted to reassure the public that there is no general threat to public safety," Jackie Penman, spokesperson for Hamilton police, said in a 2017 interview with CBC News.

The two recent incidents involving two innocent victims shatterthe mirage of 'targeted' crimes as far-away threats andexposesthe very realdangerto the general public. As the city's shooting incidents have climbed,the threatof misfired bullets has beenraised by city politicians and as well by police officials.

"Targeted does not necessarily mean with precision," Michael Kempa, a University of Ottawa associate professor of criminology says.

"There can very well be surrounding innocent people who are injured or killed in a so-called targeted shooting."

Kempa doesn't think municipal police services are trying to deceive people when they say a shooting was targeted.

Butthe word, at a surface level, might sound comforting to the public.

If a shooting isn't targeted, it's random, and how can anyone take steps to protect themselves from something completely unpredictable?

"We can't say targeted means 'there's no risk to the public' because the targeting takes place, typically, in public."

Majority of shootings are 'targeted'

Staff Sgt. Peter Thom tells CBC News a group of men gunned down 46-year-old David Stevens who lived in a rooming house with at least seven others.

The shooters hit the wrong home and the wrong man. Police have reached out to the real targets, but worry there may be another attempt to kill them.

And as Thom's team investigates that, another squad is still searching for the suspects responsible for almost killing a seven-year-old.

Police say the bullets that hit him were meant for an adult who may have not even been inside the home at the time.

Jerome Stewart, a Hamilton police media relations officer, tells CBC News the service has warned thatsome criminals aren't aware of whatis around them and who might get hurt when they strike.

"As we know from recent events, [a targeted shooting]doesn't mean bullets always hit their intended target which can present risks to others."

The three shootings follow 47 others in 2019, an eight-year high.

Hamilton police Deputy Chief Frank Bergen told CBC News in November 2019"the majority of these incidents if not all of them, most certainly recently, are targeted."

Ward 9 Coun. Brad Clark (Upper Stoney Creek)faced police chief Eric Girt at a recent budget meeting and spoke out about his frustrations toward"targeted shootings."

"I don't know how we're trying to bring down that issue because all I keep hearing is 'it's a targeted event so there's no risk to public safety,' " he said.

"Stray bullets can cause just as much harm as a targeted bullet."

Girt responded and said there's always a risk to public safety.

Clark also criticized the end of theMake Safe task force, a project by police to reduce gun violence.

It was introduced and phased out in 2019, but Girt said the service has officers dedicated to gun crimes.

Stewart adds in the last two weeks, policehave seized 10 guns.

"Prevention of gun violence is an issue across the province, it knows no borders. That is why we are at the table working closely with our community and policing partners," he says.

Guns coming from the U.S. andcrime coming from Toronto, police say

Hamilton police attribute the shootingsto crime seeping in from the Greater Toronto Area and smuggled guns from the U.S.

Kempa says the main issue is the access to guns.

"By and large thestemming the flow [of guns]ismore than half of it and then the front end thing is who is getting them and who is using them," he says.

"Gangviolence, you can usefully invest in to reduce because you can still reason with young people to get them out of gang-related violent activity but stuff like organized crime and thedrug trade is simply not going anywhere."

While calls for gun bans from Mayor Fred EisenbergerandToronto Mayor John Tory are helpful, Kempa thinks it's up to the federalgovernment.

The number of restricted firearms registered in Canada grew by almost 24 per cent in the first three years of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government.

But his team has made a few recent strides to counter gun violence including:

• A promise toadd to thelist of prohibited firearms.
• Plans to allow municipalities the authority to ban guns
• Consideration of a"red flag" law to allow professionals like doctors and educators a way to ask courts to removeguns from people who might harmthemselves or others.

There's no clear timeline for either move and Kempa says it will take years to see if either measure is effective,but he callsitpromising.