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Tyler Myers, of Friends of Hanlan\u2019s Travis Myers, the co-founder of Friends of Hanlan\u2019s, speaks with CP24 on Nov. 1. <\/p>\nToronto Mayor Olivia Chow says she will work on crowd management at the annual Halloween on Church festivities with help from community organizers. <\/p>\n
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says she will be working closely with community organizers to better structure crowd management efforts after tens of thousands of people packed into Toronto`s Gay Village for the annual Halloween on Church event over the weekend, prompting some people to raise concerns about overcrowding. <\/p>\n
Videos circulating on social media show show thousands of people crowding into the area during the festivities Saturday night.<\/p>\n
At a press conference Monday, Toronto Mayor Olivia chow estimated that attendance reached upwards of 50,000 people. <\/p>\n
Chow said that \u201cstreet festivals needs to be done in a way that is safe,\u201d adding that she will be working closely with community members to organize the event better in future years.<\/p>\n
She said that work will focus on \u201chow it can be structured better, how it could be organized better, so that everyone can continue to have fun (on) Halloween nights, but do it in a way that is more structured and possibly more controlled.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same news conference, Toronto police Chief Myron Demkiw said that there is ongoing work and conversations taking place between Toronto police and the city manager\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a city that enjoys street festivals at large, and we\u2019ve learned over the years that the the growth of them is something we need to consider and how we manage them going forward,\u201d Demkiw said<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a larger, broader bit of work that is unfolding to ensure that into our next street festival season next year, we are positioned in a way that learns from the years past to ensure they\u2019re as safe as they can be.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement to CP24, Toronto police said that as attendance increased, \u201cadditional officers were deployed from across the city to support crowd management and public safety. Officers maintained a presence throughout the event, monitoring conditions and responding as required.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police also said the most common calls for service in the area on Saturday evening involved incidents of pickpocketing and cellphone theft.<\/p>\n
\u201cPublic safety is always our priority. As part of our regular planning process, we will meet with organizers and partners to review this year\u2019s event and inform preparations for future events,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
In a previous statement, police said no arrests were reported.<\/p>\n
Safety concerns present at Festival<\/p>\n
In a interview with CP24 on Church Street Sunday morning, Travis Myers, co-founder of Friends of Hanlans, said that he has heard from numerous people who have expressed concerns about safety at the event.<\/p>\n
Tyler Myers, of Friends of Hanlan\u2019s Travis Myers, the co-founder of Friends of Hanlan\u2019s, speaks with CP24 on Nov. 1. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re getting a lot of that detail and information from people about how they don\u2019t feel safe anymore, and when I was here last night there was incredible amount of people in these crowds and very little room to move around,\u201d he said, pointing to some people who shared online that they experienced panic attacks and fell victim to pickpocketing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it did make me worried as a resident for issues of crowd crush. And honestly, it\u2019s not the type of place that I really like to spend time at on Halloween, just because it does seem like there\u2019s a whole lot going on, and maybe there\u2019s room for more preparation to make it better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Myers went on to say that he\u2019s attended Halloween on Church for years, describing it as one of the world\u2019s oldest queer Halloween celebrations.<\/p>\n
According to Myers, in recent years the event has become less community oriented and has changed as a result.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn recent years, (Halloween on Church) has really felt like it hasn\u2019t been as much for the community and has been more for people outside of the community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen that come through with folks showing up and saying homophobic and transphobic things. We\u2019ve seen that with issues of sexual assaults, many gropings.\u201d<\/p>\n
CP24 has reached out to Halloween on Church\u2019s organizers, the Church Wellesley Village Business Improvement Area, for comment.<\/p>\n
With files from CP24\u2019s Joanna Lavoie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says she will work on crowd management at the annual Halloween on Church festivities…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":955983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[712,49,48,44],"class_list":["post-955982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=955982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/955983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}