Canadian Politics Today

no - it's less than half... you can think (make up) anything you want to perpetuate your agenda. You're quite prepared and content to target a single year and in all your zealous puffery, use that single year event as a broadbrush statement - of course you are. And again, we're talking about 12 homicides... that's it! That's what has you shaking in your boots. If you look a little closer it seems the majority of those associate to young male Somali's (many just adolescents that grew up in a freakin war zone). Again, to you, when does a single year statistic rise above the anomaly that it truly is... at this point?

The Somalis in Ottawa have been heavily involved in violent crime since their arrival. It's not simply one year. It's very difficult, however, to find references to it in media since the media does its best not to mention the racial or ethnic makeup of street gangs, or even individual criminals. You only get references in passing, usually by mistake. For example, in one 'heartwarming' story in the Citizen about raising money for a Somali youth center a year or two back, it mentioned in passing, the great need for such a thing given more than half the juvenile prisoners under detention in the Ottawa area are Somalis. That's the only way you actually read anything in media.

But if you live here, you know. When the media reports a dozen 'youths' involved in a swarming on a bus, you know who they are. When the media reports two or three dozen 'youths' involved in a violent altercation, no one has to ask what the makeup was of the groups involved. For swarmings its about 80% Somali, for gang fights that don't use weapons it's usually Somalis and Lebanese. For street gang shootings it's Somalis with a few Haitians/Jamaicans thrown in for good measure, and a small number of Lebanese and associated Arabs. That's simply the reality here.