There were decreases in the Major Crime Indicators that Toronto police track including\u00a0crimes such as assault, robbery and theft. These trends are mostly continuing into 2026. Toronto is, according to the statistics, one of the safest cities in the world for its population size.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw talked about the disconnect during an interview on CP24 this week. He said TPS data is showing shootings at 20 year lows. There have been 62 shootings so far this year, which is down 20 per cent year-to-date compared to last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, the data tells us a story that we\u2019re going in the right direction downwards, but the sense of safety and security is not necessarily connecting with the data,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There have been\u00a0spikes in certain crimes that\u00a0may be contributing to public sentiment.\u00a0Police have released\u00a0terrifying surveillance videos of home invasions and arsons, which\u00a0are on the rise. While robberies might be down, fraud and scams are up and police across the GTA have warned distraction and retail theft is increasing.<\/p>\n
A recent survey<\/a>\u00a0of a random sample of 1,500 Canadian adults from across the country\u00a0looked at the perception of 15 cities and found that 57 per cent of respondents said they considered Toronto somewhat or very unsafe, while only 39 per cent described it as safe. Toronto ranks second-worst nationally for perceived safety, trailing only Winnipeg.<\/p>\n \u201cToronto is different,\u201d\u00a0said David Valentin, principal at Liaison Strategies<\/a>, in a statement with the survey results.\u00a0\u201cToronto is perceived as almost as unsafe as Winnipeg, but the official crime-severity data does not put Toronto in the same category.<\/p>\n \u201cToronto stands out as the clearest reputational penalty in the report.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That builds on another survey of Torontonians last year that found\u00a076 per cent of people surveyed said they thought that the homicide rate had gone up and 32 per cent of people think that crime is the top issue in the city, along with affordability.<\/p>\n The risk-fear paradox<\/p>\n Criminologists and sociologists have dubbed it the risk-fear paradox, often chalking it up to media coverage of crime and politicians using crime as a talking point.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the feelings of fear can also affect people\u2019s behaviour.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2019\u2018Feeling unsafe is not the same as being unsafe, right? Those are two different things, but feelings are important because how you live in your city is going to be conditioned by how you feel about your safety,\u201d said Heather Rollwagen, associate professor of sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University.\u00a0<\/p>\n She said this can cause cyclical loops, where feeling unsafe leads to behaviour change that can cause unsafe feelings to perpetuate.<\/p>\n As an example, she points to the end of 2023, when there were a number of high profile and violent incidents on or around the TTC.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you feel unsafe on the subway, you won\u2019t take the subway, so people then choose to drive downtown or take an Uber. So then it actually impacts people\u2019s willingness to go on (the subway) and then in some ways it reinforces the fear,\u201d said Rollwagen.<\/p>\n How are you feeling, Toronto?<\/p>\n Bradford has criticized incumbent Olivia Chow for not taking a spot on the police services board. Chow\u2019s response in one recent debate was that crime is down\u00a0and her focus has been on hiring more mental health support workers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Toronto police and Metrolinx say a permanent police presence at Union Station has been in the works for months.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Toronto police and Metrolinx say a permanent police presence at Union Station has been in the works for months.<\/p>\n Bradford, meanwhile, has called for hiring 1,000 more police officers and more police on the TTC. He\u2019s pledged to build a police substation at Union Station<\/a>, which police said they had been planning for a while.\u00a0<\/p>\n Across the GTA\u2019s regions, crime rate are usually pretty low compared to Toronto and for the most part has been trending down, but it\u2019s not uniform.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Durham, the police chief reported general downward trends, but at the end of 2025 highlighted shootings and mental health apprehensions rising.\u00a0The\u00a0Halton police chief reported in April that crime was the lowest there since 2014, with violent crime falling for the past three years. In York Region, things have remained static for the past two years, but there are signs of a decrease this year, with overall incidents down 12 per cent and shootings and homicides experiencing year-to-date declines.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Peel is a different story; while there have been many downward crime trends, shooting incidents have been up, and public safety has become an issue in the Mississauga mayoral election<\/a>.<\/p>\n Data from Peel police shows 103 shootings in the first half of 2026, nearly doubling the 58 from the same time period in 2025.\u00a0There, incumbent mayor Carolyn Parrish is being criticized for not sitting on the police board, which she left in 2024 to challenge a 20 per cent budget request. Her rivals, Bonnie Crombie and Alvin Tedjo, have both promised to hire more officers. That promise has earned Tedjo the first-ever endorsement from the Peel Police union.<\/p>\n \u2018The visual signs of disorder\u2019<\/p>\n Scot Wortley, a criminology professor at University of Toronto, said he\u2019s seen the disconnect between fact and feeling play out for nearly 25 years when it comes to the perception of crime.<\/p>\n \u201cSurveys over the last 25 years will show the same thing, that people overall think that crime is getting worse, even when it\u2019s getting better,\u201d said Wortley.<\/p>\n He said a focus on unhoused people and drug addictions may also be colouring people\u2019s perceptions.<\/p>\n According to City of Toronto data, the\u00a0number\u00a0of unhoused people doubled from 2021 to 2024, going from 7,300 to 15,400. In 2025, the city\u2019s efforts helped reduce that number to 12,196.<\/p>\n He pointed to \u201cthe difference between crime and visual signs of disorder.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe presence and visibility can contribute to the feeling that the city is more dangerous than it has been, but that perception is not consistent with what we\u2019re seeing in terms of overall crimes,\u201d said Wortley.<\/p>\n Neither crime numbers and stats being down nor the disconnect between citizens and the numbers is Toronto-specific. Crime numbers are also down generally across the U.S., and\u00a0officials in major cities including New York, San Francisco and Chicago have all tried to spread this message. In New York, there\u2019s been a focus on several crime lows through media releases from the mayor\u2019s office, while Chicago has focused on the drop in homicides in recent years.<\/p>\n The good old days<\/p>\n Wortley said it\u2019s important to look at who benefits from the idea that crime is up, and he points to police, police unions and politicians, who conversely also take credit when there are dips in crime.<\/p>\n \u201cI think crime is often a deflection strategy that takes attention away. We can see how (U.S. President Donald) Trump uses the issue<\/a> in the United States. The focus on immigrant crime or street crimes, something that deflects attention away from \u2026 corporate malfeasance and corporate crime and tax cuts for the rich and all these other issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Crime is down across the U.S. with the lowest number of homicides since 1900, which Trump has also taken credit for, while also saying crime is out of control.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jane Sprott, a criminology professor at TMU has an example that\u2019s even closer to home,\u00a0referencing when Minister of Justice Sean Fraser recently introduced Bill C-14, the Sentencing and Bail Reform Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n A memorial for one of the victims of the Danzig shooting, inside a bus shelter at the scene in July 2012.<\/p>\n BERNARD WEIL<\/p>\n \u201cHe actually made a comment about how safe it was when the Jays last won the World Series<\/a>. So the early 1990s, his pals and him were running around in crime-free neighbourhoods and they didn\u2019t worry about break and enters and motor vehicle thefts\u00a0\u2026 he was nine years old then, so he\u2019s using his memory of what crime was like and that is false,\u201d said Sprott.<\/p>\n According to that recent Liaison Strategies poll, only 12 per cent of people actually follow criminal statistics.<\/p>\n From Jane Creba to Salsa on St. Clair<\/p>\n Sprott and Wortley also bring up the role of the media. It\u2019s hard to believe crime is down significantly when morning news programs start at the latest crime scene where something horrible has happened.\u00a0The rise and popularity of true crime as a genre and social media sites that cover and amplify coverage of crime is also reinforcing that crime is all around us.\u00a0<\/p>\n The John Howard Society,\u00a0a crime reduction non-profit,\u00a0has written extensively on media\u2019s reporting on crime. A\u00a0February post<\/a>\u00a0looked at 10 studies at how the media influenced crime perceptions and the criminal justice system, \u201clead(ing) to inaccurate public perceptions which in turn drive poorly thought-out laws and policies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re never going to have zero crime,\u201d said Sprott. \u201cThe numbers might be lower but there\u2019s always going to be some level and it\u2019s always going to be disruptive and horrible and traumatizing \u2026 but I mean if people are chasing a zero crime rate that\u2019s never going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Wortley also said that high profile crimes have a larger impact on people\u2019s perceptions.<\/p>\n
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