Organized Crime Right in Front of our Faces

Journalist: Adrian Reece

Crime has evolved from television to real life, and the phrase “Life imitates art” comes alive in the types of illegal activity that is surfacing in 2026.

Seven police officers were charged in crimes related to corrupting involving drug trafficking and even an attempt on the life of a prison official at his home. These are crimes that exist mainly in media, and many cinematic pieces entail stories of corrupt police officers and law men who toe the line of what is right and what is wrong.

Organized crime is something that typically goes unnoticed by the population at large and seeing it in full works in a city like Toronto displays how far the city has fallen in regard to hardship. Things began a few years ago during the Trudeau administration when prices and cost of living skyrocketed making it extremely difficult to afford the necessities, that couple with scarcity propaganda greatly exasperated people’s actions and pushed them into survival mode.

Audacious crimes have increased from screen to real life, 2023 saw bank robberies occurring in small towns like Bowmanville, Ontario due to hardship and scarcity.

However, when law enforcement is implicated in crimes, we get a glimpse of how deep corruption really goes, If those who have sworn to protect us are participating in illegal activities, then who can be trusted to protect us? This opens a slew of questions about the system and how something like this has gone unnoticed for so long. The level of police officers involved is an important point to consider as well.

Police Chief Myron Demkiw is under scrutiny due to the corruption occurring under his leadership. While he has not been asked to step down, it is a situation that demands attention from himself, as well as internal and external auditing departments to ascertain how something like this occurred.

Police officers are typically well paid with their first-class constables earning as much as $110,000 or more in Ontario. This is a considerable factor in the officers’ decisions, whether they felt as though their salary was not enough, or they simply wanted to involve themselves in crime is unknown, however with the difficulty of the current economy these officers could have felt backed into a corner.

Ultimately Toronto is facing a crisis, as crime increases, and organized crime is pushed to the forefront of what we notice, the precariousness of our society is emphasized in all these actions, and the cost of living, immigration and societal restrictions and the housing crisis.

What does our current society look like? The worsening of crime and the prevalence of it is increasing in all capacities. The Canadian government needs to make necessary changes to drive things into a new direction. Organized crime right in front of our faces, public assassination attempts of law enforcement figures trigger fear and give rise to different types of expectations for how we are to continue living our lives in Toronto and Canada as a whole.

How we continue to navigate life in one of the traditionally safest countries in the world, and how we continue to put trust in law enforcement and the governing body of officials who put their resources and backing into the police service is largely in question. We must reconsider how we navigate these untrustworthy times.