Securing the Safety of Festivals and Large Community Gatherings

Toronto City Council has expanded youth violence prevention programs, hired more 911 operators to reduce call wait times, and are strengthening our front-line emergency response through the Toronto Police Service's multi-year hiring plan. These are important measures, but there is still more work to do to get guns off our streets and to make sure that festivals and events are safe for everyone. The Toronto Police Service has identified opportunities to improve coordination in planning these kinds of large events. For example, Toronto successfully hosted six World Cup matches, which safely brought together tens of thousands of people from across the city and around the world. This was the result of a fully integrated safety strategy and collaboration across many City divisions and agencies. This motion seeks to ensure that there are real security improvements and resources are deployed to prioritize everyone's safety at large public events. Ultimately, our goal should be for all our residents to be able to continue coming together to celebrate culture, sports and community, freely and peacefully, and know that everything has been done to ensure that they are in a safe and secure environment.

Working with the Toronto Police Service to develop a risk-based event security framework that establishes security practices for festivals and large community gatherings based on threat assessments, expected attendance, venue characteristics, and current intelligence, while remaining scalable to the size and nature of the event; c. Conducting a jurisdictional scan of other global cities to identify best practices for securing large events; and, d. Working with festival organizers to address the costs associated with ensuring adequate security.