Chris Selley: Do women deserve to feel safe on our streets, or don't they?

Osman Azizov is out on bail. It cannot be, and yet, apparently, it is. Among the 14 charges against the 18-year-old Toronto man, and two alleged accomplices, are sexual assault with a weapon, attempted kidnapping, impersonating a police officer and unauthorized possession of at least one firearm.

It’s a close race, but the kidnapping allegations are perhaps the most disturbing — because who knows what might have been in store for the victims afterwards?

On May 31 of this year, Toronto police allege, “a woman was approached by three men — one armed with a handgun and another with a knife. …  The suspects attempted to force her into a vehicle but fled when interrupted by a passing motorist.”

And on June 24, Peel Regional Police allege, “three men exited a vehicle … armed with a handgun, a rifle, and knife … and chased (two female) victims. (The suspects) fled after being interrupted by a passerby.”

It gets worse. The investigation uncovered “additional offences motivated by hate,” Toronto Police said in a press release, “particularly targeting women and members of the Jewish community.” The RCMP has charged one of Azizov’s co-accused, Waleed Khan (though not Azizov himself), with terrorism offences, with respect to alleged support for ISIS. (Khan was also charged with breaching probation for previous offences. Shocker!)

So in a nutshell, here’s what Torontonians and other area residents are being told: Three guys were allegedly running around trying to sexually assault and kidnap women for God-only-knows what purposes. Possibly they (or at least one of them) were targeting Jewish women specifically, though police communications have been somewhat vague on this point. There is a an alleged nexus, albeit indirectly in Azizov’s case, to Middle East terrorism.

And that’s somehow not enough to keep the accused behind bars pending his trial? It’s a good thing for Azizov that Canadians are not prone to vigilantism. It’s a good thing across the board that Canadians are not prone to vigilantism! But our general equanimity is being taken advantage of.

As I always say in cases like this, no one believes this is appropriate — not the pinkest law professor, not the most doctrinaire defence lawyer, not the federal or Ontario NDP’s justice critics. Nobody, anywhere, except possibly Azizov himself, thinks it’s OK for him to be out on the street while he faces these charges.

The prison reformers/abolitionists at the John Howard Society are probably even a bit hacked off, if they’re honest with themselves, if only because this sort of madness tends to discredit the not-entirely-crazy notion that fewer people should be behind bars. It’s difficult to keep focus on such people when the system keeps releasing people who should so obviously be behind bars.

Speaking of hacking off: Electronic monitoring, usually via an ankle attachment, is one of the more stringent conditions Canadian courts can impose on people while they await trial or sentencing. A cursory news-archive search confirms my impression that these ankle monitors are not especially hard to leave behind (though, small blessing, most of their former owners seem incapable of avoiding recapture for long).

This year in Ontario alone, at least two men facing weapons and theft charges have allegedly cut off their monitors and fled, along with one man awaiting sentencing for having sex with a child, and another for smuggling guns across the Canada-U.S. border. Others who have been assigned ankle monitors in the past include the aforementioned Waleed Khan.

There are semi-mainstream voices in Canada who will argue that Jews really have nothing to worry about in Canada. They include Avi Lewis, who might well be the federal NDP’s next leader. In a toe-curling melodramatic tour de force last year — Lewis deplored “the relentless cries of antisemitism that ring out hour after hour,” that “pour forth like a torrent these days, from CIJA (the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs), from B’nai B’rith and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, from Hillel (the Jewish student organization).”

“Everyone is so tired of being battered by … the hyper-entitled victimizing victims, who wield (antisemitism) as a rhetorical cudgel. So tired of the bludgeoning brigade of cry-bullies,” Lewis continued, placing last in the high-school debate competition that he seemed to imagine he was contesting.

These are not the sorts of things New Democrats, or anyone else, would typically say to women pondering the threat of kidnapping and sexual assault on the streets of Toronto and its surrounding municipalities. Perhaps we could all agree that every Canadian deserves to feel safe, regardless of how statistically safe or imperilled they are; and that Canadians should make it a priority to make their fellow Canadians feel that sense of safety and belonging, regardless of what might be happening abroad.

That means locking people like Osman Azizov pending trial. But then, common sense alone tells you that. And yet, here we are.

National Post
cselley@postmedia.com