Church St. TCHC resident not feeling secure

Conflicting police, Primary Response reports

By Angela Scappatura –

A tenant in one of the buildings maintained by the Toronto Community Housing Commission says that she is worried that building security is not providing a safe environment.

“It just seems like they are being paid for nothing in a way you know,” said Pat Duck, tenant of the 1 Church St. address. “I hardly ever see them here and when you need them for something they aren’t around.”

When Pat Duck went to do a little laundry early on Nov. 26—a Sunday morning—she noticed a group of teenagers loitering in the lobby of her building. Feeling disturbed by their presence, Duck contacted building security provided by Primary Response to report the problem.

“I phoned security at four a.m. because they were laying around and sitting on the window ledge,” said Duck. “Security told me that they had already been told and had been waiting for four hours for police to come and get them.”

Duck was not informed that, although security had contacted police, it was in response to an earlier complaint about a loud party and police had attended to the call over two hours earlier.

Primary Response would not comment on the matter but Gurmeet Singh, a security consultant with the Toronto Community Housing Commission, confirmed police were called at 10:53 p.m. and arrived at roughly 1:10 a.m.

“Security advised the police about a resident refusing to turn down the music,” said Singh. “There were also reports of people streaming from the party and hanging out in the lobby but the police took care of that.”

Singh said that Primary Response has no record of Duck’s call and according police, they were not contacted by security after attending to the noise complaint.

Sgt. Frank Bergen of 51 Division said that they were contacted twice by building security regarding the noise—a detail that, according to Singh, was not contained in the report by Primary Response. The first call was to inform police of the complaint and the second requested their immediate presence.

“We did attend a radio call regarding a noise complaint,” said Bergen. “It was probably a lot bigger than what had been initially called.”

One reason for the lack of visible security presence may be due to the fact that the officers employed by Primary Response to patrol the Church St. building are responsible for five other addresses in the area at the same time.

Singh said that tenants are instructed to contact Primary Response when an incident occurs. Each resident has been given a card with contact information and their calls are received by a security representative before being directed to an officer.

A meeting addressing tenant security concerns was held more than a week following the incident and according to Singh, roughly seven out of more than 100 building residents attended.