Crime in Toronto has been low in comparison to other major cities. In 2024, a ranking of 60 large cities by The Economist ranked Toronto as the 6th safest major city in the world, and the safest major city in North America.
Even though Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America, it has a relatively low homicide rate that has fluctuated over the 2010s decade between 2.1 and 3.8 per 100,000 people. This is worse than most of Europe, but comparable to modern day New York.TPS Crime Statistics , Toronto Police Service, 2014. This is also lower than other major cities such as Atlanta (19.0), Chicago (18.5), Boston (9.0), San Francisco (8.6), New York City (5.1), and San Jose (4.6).New York City Murder Rate In 2013 Reaches Historic Low, Huffington Post, 20 December 2013.Detroit police chief nixing 12-hour shifts as homicide rate soars, Detroit Free Press, 17 September 2013. In 2007, Toronto's robbery rate also ranked relatively high, with 407.1 robberies per 100,000 people, compared to Detroit (675.1), Chicago (588.6), Los Angeles (348.5), Vancouver (366.2), New York City (265.9), Montreal (235.3), San Diego (158.8), and Portland (150.5).
While homicide rates in Toronto were relatively low for several years, they started to increase in 2016 until Toronto experienced the highest homicide rate among major Canadian cities in 2018; in that single year, the city surpassed the homicide rate of New York City. Homicide rates declined again in 2019; when compared across major metropolitan areas, the Greater Toronto Area ranked ninth in Canada with a homicide rate of 2.26 per 100,000.
Late 1980s and early 1990s
Toronto TotalHomicidesHomicides 2004–2017 – Business & Intelligence Analytics Toronto Police Service. Accessed on 15 June 2018. GunDeaths Total Shootings Year Occurrences Victims 1990 55 1991 89 38 1992 65 15 1993 59 25 1994 65 25 1995 61 13 1996 58 22 1997 61 24 1998 58 13 1999 49 18 2000 61 25 2001 61 33 2002 65 28 2003 67 31 326 2004 64 27 191 2005 80 52 359 359 2006 70 29 217 323 2007 86 43 205 242 2008 70 36 238 336 2009 62 36 256 338 2010 65 32 260 330 2011 51 227 281 2012 57 33 213 289 2013 57 22 202 255 2014 58 27 177 242 59 27288 429 2016 75 41 407 581 2017 65/66 Homicides 2004 – 2017 Toronto Police Service. Accessed on 31 December 2018. 39 395 594201898Homicides YTD – Business & Intelligence Analytics Toronto Police Service. Accessed on 22 August 2018.514246042019 79-80 44495 7602020 71 39 462 2172021 85 46 409 2092022 71 44 379 1942023 73 29 345 168 2024 86 44 461 1642025 45 20 263 121
In the late 1980s, gangs in Toronto were becoming increasingly violent. This coincided with the arrival of crack cocaine in the city, which caused more gun violence to occur in low-income neighborhoods.Betsy Powell, "Gang life allure: Drugs, fast money, easy sex", Toronto Star, 5 September 2010. In 1988, Toronto Police were under scrutiny for a series of shootings of unarmed black men, dating back to the late 1970s.K.K. Campbell, "LAWS CHARGES METRO POLICE BIAS AGAINST BLACKS 'WORSE THAN L.A.'" Eye Weekly, 1 October 1992James: Dudley Laws stung and inspired a generation Toronto Star. Accessed on 4 March 2016.Philip Mascoll, "Sherona Hall, 59: Fighter for justice", Toronto Star, 9 January 2007 In 1991, Toronto experienced its most violent year with 89 murders (that murder tally was surpassed in 2018), 16 of which were linked to drug wars involving rival gangs. Much of the high murder toll of 1991 was due to a gang war in Chinatown between various Chinese gangs for the control of the drug trade.
On 4 May 1992, there were riots on Yonge Street, which followed peaceful protesting of a fatal shooting of a black man who was swinging a knife at a police officer. This was the eighth shooting of an assailant in four years, and fourth fatal one.Raghu Krishnan, "Remembering Anti-Racism" , This Magazine, January 2003. Later that year, local activist Dudley Laws claimed that police bias against blacks was worse in Toronto than in Los Angeles.
Late 1990s Toronto recorded 49 homicides in 1999, which, as of , remains the city's lowest homicide total since 1986. That year, there were a total of 90 homicides across Toronto's census metropolitan area, with a murder rate of 1.68 per 100,000 people.
2005–2014: "Year of the Gun", shootings and the falling murder rate
In 2005, Toronto media coined the term "Year of the Gun" because the number of gun-related homicides reached a record 52 out of 80 murders in total; almost double the 27 gun deaths recorded the previous year.CTV Toronto – Toronto sets a new record for gun-related carnage – CTV News, Shows and Sports – Canadian Television On 26 December 2005, 15-year-old Jane Creba was shot and killed in the Boxing Day shooting while shopping on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. After this incident, many people called for the federal government to ban handguns in Canada; this also became an issue in the 2006 federal election, but the number of homicides dropped to 70 in 2006.
However, 2007 saw another, smaller wave of gun violence starting in May with the shooting death of 15-year-old Jordan Manners at his school, C. W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute. A couple of months later, on 22 July 2007, 11-year-old Ephraim Brown was killed after being shot in the neck by a stray bullet, during a gang shooting in the city's North York district at Jane Street and Sheppard Avenue. These events raised calls for a ban on handguns once again. Of the 86 murders in 2007, half were via firearm; thus, Toronto had a murder rate of about 3.43 per 100,000, slightly less than the peak rate of 3.9 in 1991. There was a drop in murders again in 2008 with 70 (a total of 105 murders in the Greater Toronto Area – including a record high 27 occurring in neighbouring Peel Region (with Mississauga having a record 18 homicides, but statistically this was an anomalous year for Peel Region as a whole).
The falling murder totals continued in 2009 with 65, followed by 63 in 2010, then the lowest total in recent times with only 51 (75 total in the GTA) in 2011, the lowest homicide total since 1986 at a rate of 2.0 per 100,000, close to the national average, representing a further dramatic decline in the city's murder rate for the fourth consecutive year. The number of homicides stabilized to the mid-50s for the next 4 years. Overall, shooting incidents also declined, from 335 occurrences in 2010 to 255 reported in 2013, and reaching a decade-low 196 for 2014. Since 2014, gun violence has been steadily rising, with 395 shootings in 2017, 427 in 2018, and as well almost 500 in 2019.
2015–present After a substantial decrease in homicides after the 2005 "year of the gun" and a stable period 2009–2015, the murder rate in Toronto started to increase again drastically in 2016. The homicide rate jumped to 75 homicides in 2016 and spiked in 2018 with 98 homicides in 2018, which is partially due to the Toronto van attack, which resulted in the murder of 10 people on 23 April. This increased Toronto's homicide rate to around 3.6 per 100,000 people in 2018, the highest among major Canadian cities and higher than New York City (around 3.51 per 100,000) for the same year. The homicide total dropped again in 2019 to 80 (a rate of 2.9 per 100,000 people) below the rate of most US cities, but still higher than the Canadian average of 1.8. 2020 saw another decrease in homicides with the city having a total of 71 murders for the year (a rate of around 2.6 per 100,000 people). However in 2021, the city saw an increase in homicides, with the city murders increasing to 85, giving Toronto a homicide rate of 3.04 per 100,000 people. A decrease in murders happened the following year with 71 being reported in 2022 (a murder rate of 2.5 per 100,000), which was then followed by a slight increase with 73 homicides being reported in 2023, giving the city a murder rate of 2.6 per 100,000 people. 2024 saw another increase in homicides with 86 being reported in the year, giving the city a homicide rate of around 3.1 per 100,000 residents.
In conjunction with that increase in murders, overall shooting incidents also increased from a low of 177 in 2014 to an all-time high of 495 in 2019, even outpacing gun incidents that occurred in 2018. The high number of shooting incidents in 2019, resulted in the city having a shooting rate of 18.1 per 100,000 people, which was double the shooting rate of New York City in the same year (9.1 per 100,000 residents). After the peak in 2019, the city saw a consistent decline in shootings for next years dropping all the way to 345 shooting incidents in 2023. The following year saw a 33.6% increase in shootings with 461 being reported throughout 2024. At the same time, gun deaths increased from a low of 22 in 2013 to a high of 51 in 2018 and dropped slightly to 44 in 2019, followed by another downtick gun deaths with 39 in 2020. 2021 saw an increase in gun murders with 46, followed by a decrease the next year with 44 in 2022.
Organized crime Victorian-Edwardian era Large criminal organizations have been operating in the Toronto region since at least the mid-19th century, beginning with the homegrown, yet short-lived Markham Gang. Since that time, large-scale organized crime in Toronto has mostly been the domain of international or foreign-based crime syndicates. From the late 18th century and continuing well into the 20th century, Toronto was a city mostly inhabited by Protestants of British extraction. In the Victorian age and for some time afterward, Toronto came to be known as "Toronto the Good". Toronto in the first half of the 20th century was a city whose population was of overwhelmingly Anglo-Irish descent as the 1941 census showed that people whose families originated from the British isles made up 86% of the population while people whose families originated elsewhere made up 13% of the population. Not until the 1950-1960s following changes in immigration law did a significant number of people of non-British origin began to settle in Toronto, gradually changing Toronto from a city whose people were mostly of British descent into a city that is one of the most multicultural in North America.
Reflecting the influence of Victorian values, in Toronto as elsewhere in Canada laws were passed to regulate social behavior. Drugs such as cocaine and marijuana together with gambling were banned, prostitution was cracked down upon, and access to alcohol was limited. A British visitor to Toronto in 1896 stated: "Sunday is as melancholy and suicidal sort of day as Puritan principles can make it". As part of the effort to regulate social behavior, the Toronto police force went from 172 officers in 1872 to 600 officers by 1914. The majority of the Toronto policemen in this period were British immigrants with a disproportionate number of the police force being Ulster Protestants. The growth of the police force was due not to an increase in crime per se, but rather due to an increase in laws regulating social behavior as the major concerns of the Toronto police went from being burglary, vagrancy and breaking up fistfights in 1872 to enforcing laws regarding censorship, Sabbath-breaking, dance halls, gambling, alcohol consumption, street traffic, and all forms of "immorality" by 1914. One journalist, Harry Wodson, wrote that "Toronto the Good" was a city of "shall nots" as the city council had passed 6,000 bylaws regulating all forms of social behavior. Such laws created opportunities for organized crime which moved in to fill the demand for what at least certain segments of the population wanted, but were not legally able to enjoy.