With just days to go before the halfway point of 2018, Toronto Police have confirmed at least 48 homicides within the city since January 1. That's more than double the 23 we'd seen last year at this point.
Five people were killed last weekend alone four of them by guns prompting both Police Chief Mark Saunders and Mayor John Tory to express public concern over a recent spike in shooting deaths.
"The incidents of gun violence we have seen in our city in the past few days are shocking and can in no way be accepted or brushed aside," said Mayor Tory late last month following a rash of high-profile killings.
"As mayor, I am troubled by every act of violence in our city regardless of where it happens."
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University of Toronto Associate Professor of Criminology Scot Wortley, an expert in crime statistics, says that, based on an estimated population of 2.93 million, Toronto has a current crime rate of 1.67 per 100,000 people.
New York City, which has an estimated population of 8.62 million, had seen 130 homicides at the same point, according to the NYPD's CompStat crime data portal.
Wortley says this would put New York's homicide rate at 1.51 per 100,000 people