Matt Gurney: When the police give up, the public makes their own plans

And guess what? They're making their own plans.

By: Matt Gurney

I was sitting in the back of a cab, heading home after a night out with the guys and fighting off sleep, when I saw something that made me jolt back awake and sit up for a closer look. The cabbie kept right on driving, and I only had the briefest of glances at it, but I was pretty sure I had seen a Toronto neighbourhood street closed off with an improvised barricade, with a sign on it warning that the street was guarded by a private security force.

I want to stress to the readers that although I’d been out that evening, and even though I had made the choice to take a cab, I wasn’t tanked. I was just being cautious. So I was pretty confident the next morning that I had indeed seen what I thought I had. A couple of nights later, heading home after an evening out with my son, I made a point of retracing that route and driving by that same street. And sure enough, there it was. A couple of portable bollards and a sign warning that a security guard was on duty. It wasn’t exactly a barricade, like I first thought. The street was still accessible. I followed it to where it loops back out to the main road and saw that there was a similar sign and a couple of bollards there as well. So you can definitely drive down it. Public access is not impeded, technically. An ambulance, an Uber, or a snowplow could get through, no problem.

But it was an overt display of a perimeter defence. This is not the kind of thing we’re used to seeing in Toronto.

For now.