David Miller claims police "incredibly expensive", but are they more expensive than the lives of Torontonians murdered after his election?

David Miller, Mayor of Toronto, wrote in "We must ban handguns", (National Post, Dec.10, 2005):

"Guns have no place on the streets of Toronto or anywhere else in this country. This is a deeply held Canadian value and one that sets us apart from our neighbours to the south.
Over the past decade, citizens from across Canada have been calling for legislators to impose an outright ban on handguns and I join them in lending my support to Prime Minister Paul Martin's promise to choke off the supply of deadly firearms that wreak so much havoc.
Toronto is a safe city and we will continue to invest in our communities and our youth to give them opportunities and hope for the future. But all governments must now work together to reclaim neighbourhoods afflicted by gun violence. No one can act alone.
In Toronto, statistics show that almost every kind of crime is down. Yet when it comes to guns and the murderous carnage they have visited upon the city this year, the numbers are up. As I've said before, guns turn punks into killers. And it is for this reason that we must focus our law enforcement efforts on the firearms that have brought so much fear and tragedy to so many neighbourhoods in Toronto and elsewhere.
Where do the guns come from? Toronto Police have told me there are two main sources. About one half come across the border from the United States. Most of the others are stolen from gun owners in and around the city. For example, two years ago in Toronto's Malvern community, there was a break and enter where 39 guns were stolen. Twelve of those guns were subsequently used in the commission of crimes. At least one of those crimes was a murder.
This has to stop. We must get at the supply of guns. And there are only two ways to do it.
First, we have to stop the guns coming in from the United States by tightening border security and making every effort to bring some common sense to gun control south of the border. But secondly -- and just as crucial to this initiative -- we must wipe out the supply of guns right here in Canada. The situation is extremely serious and we must act now.
What about the rights of gun owners? Well, they can either disable their weapons or turn them in to the authorities. The rights of people to live in safety in our communities are paramount. A hobby is a privilege and gun collection has become a very dangerous one.
But a ban on guns is only the first step. The judicial system must also take a harder stance.
If you're caught with a gun, the courts should treat it the same way they would if you used that gun to commit a crime. You don't get bail. You have your trial and, if you're convicted, you stay in jail. The way things are today, it's far too easy to be released from custody after you're arrested for possessing a gun. I think that's wrong. Gun possession is not being treated with the seriousness it deserves. As far as I'm concerned, sentences for having a gun should be on par with those handed down for using that weapon in the commission of a crime.
Complex problems require complex solutions. To work, increased enforcement -- like a ban on guns -- must be supported by investment in our young people and our vulnerable communities.
The time to act is now."

Here's what I wrote in response to Miller's disingenuous “We must ban handguns” article.

"Just two years ago, broom-hugger David Miller rejected hiring 400 urgently needed police officers with a ridiculous claim that it would be “incredibly expensive” to do so. He has since found tens of millions of dollars for a new CNE stadium, as well as TTC subsidies, salary hikes for himself and the unions, and so on. Added to the millions more that Martin conveniently conjured for his gun-ban stunt, how many trained and ready officers would that money have provided?
Miller’s nauseating display of lib-left sycophancy is simply smoke and mirrors, off-target, and too-little too-late. Handguns (already banned) are being smuggled across a border that’s been under Liberal control for 12 years. A lax judiciary, overwhelmed police and correctional services, and weather-vane justice ministers are all the inevitable blow-back of Liberal soft-on-crime incompetence.
It’ll take more than a pathetic broom and hollow platitudes to misdirected Liberal policy to sweep the blood-stains off Miller’s supposedly clean streets. "

Although this letter above was never printed, note that I wrote the above in response to the Post article on Dec. 10, 2005. This was BEFORE Toronto high school student Jane Creba was gunned down in Toronto on Yonge St. while shopping on Dec. 26, 2005. This senseless murder, as the many preceding it, shocked the city...and put the Mayors rhetoric to shame.

During the 2003 mayoral race David Miller recklessly opposed hiring 400 more police officers with the naive (negligent?) claim that it would be “incredibly expensive” to do so.
More “expensive” than the lives of dozens of Torontonians subsequently murdered after he became mayor?

When Miller returns from sunny Spain to Toronto’s blood-soaked streets, he should realize that this latest shooting spree has spiraled into nothing less than terrorism, and that he is incompetent to deal with it.

During his Dec. 30, 2005 news conference , Toronto mayor David Miller linked Toronto’s gang violence with an assertion that half the guns used in crimes are supposedly of U.S. origin. He claimed “that the U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto”.
Which specific documents are his repeated claims substantiated upon? Is he citing statistically factual evidence or simply anecdotal speculation?

Frankly, a more direct link is his 2003 mayoralty campaign refusal to consider hiring 400 more Toronto police officers, dismissing them as being “incredibly expensive”. Today those additional officers would have already been trained and on the job. Shamefully, Miller swept concerns regarding gang violence and citizen safety from his questionable list of "clean" priorities.

When Paul Martin (whose futile and fallacious gun-ban proposal Miller endorses) talks about “exclusion”, wasn’t Jane Creba ‘excluded’ from her right to walk on our supposedly 'clean', safe, and policed streets without being killed?

Miller's posturing has come too late, at too high a cost and is symptomatic of Toronto’s soft-on-crime political culture.

What a shameful embarrassment this clown is.