I was driving along Yonge at Davisville minding my own business. And there it was…
Workmen digging another fucking hole in the road. No problem. There are currently 2 billion holes in Toronto roads, waiting to be unholed. It's an unholey task.
The huge problem, in my eyes, was the cop standing beside the hole, on his phone surfing handcuff porn and looking rather bored, as if protecting people from a pothole might be a useless endeavour. At $65/hour.
The hole was carefully marked off by pylons and tape and it seemed, to the untrained eye, that people were quite used to dealing with the sudden appearance of a hole and managed themselves very well in the presence of such perceived danger. No one fell in the hole and the hole itself seemed quite okay with people walking by. It didn't, for example, lunge at anyone with a knife.
And this was right beside the subway, where people are stabbed almost on a weekly basis. And pushed on tracks and assaulted. And die.
What's the death count on the TTC in the last year? Higher than the death count from potholes, I believe.
And yet we can't seem to afford to keep cops on the TTC. The money is going down a hole, so to speak.
So maybe someone can ask one of the mayoral candidates whether they support money for cops and potholes or cops and people's lives.
Protect people, not potholes.
Note: get your t-shirt saying "Protect people, not potholes" for 1 million dollars.
