Some residents living near Barbara Hall Park in Toronto’s Church-Wellesley neighbourhood are calling for action from the city over what they say has become an unsafe and unusable public space.
The small park, located on Church Street, features a splash pad, off-leash dog area and an AIDS memorial. Over the last several years, neighbours say it has also become home to dirty needles, open drug use and violence, even being used at times as a public toilet.
Data analyzed by CBC Toronto shows police calls for service — which include 911 calls — are made to the park’s address on a near daily basis.
“It’s loud, it’s dirty,” said Daniel Perozzo, who lives nearby and goes to the dog park most days.
“The other day the City of Toronto came through and cleaned it up in the morning, and then by the afternoon it was already looking like they hadn’t done anything.”
What the calls to police show
CBC Toronto has reviewed Toronto Police Service data showing calls to 519 Church St. — the address of the park as well as the adjacent community centre, The 519 — from January 2019 to April of this year.
The 519 is a charity and a city agency that serves the 2SLGBTQ+ community, providing services that include a focus on poverty reduction, programs for people who use drugs and supports for other marginalized groups.
Police call logs show there were 1,831 calls for service from Jan. 1, 2019 through April 4, 2024, an average of about one call per day.
The data was obtained by a Toronto resident through a freedom of information request.
Some residents in Toronto’s Church Wellesley neighbourhood say Barbara Hall Park is unsafe. CBC Toronto analyzed police call log data.
CBC Toronto went through those call logs, categorizing and analyzing them by date and call type. The most common call type was for medical complaints, with 185 calls categorized that way. Medical complaint calls reached a high during this period in 2023, with 60 such calls. The second most common event type listed in the call logs was “disorderlies.”
The most calls made to the location by year happened in 2020, when there were a total of 428 calls, while 2023 saw the second most, with 399 calls.
Last year also saw the highest number of “priority one” calls, which are the most serious and potentially life-threatening, with 73 such calls.
Stephanie Sayers, a spokesperson for Toronto police, said the service has four community officers dedicated to the neighbourhood “who attend the park daily and work proactively with community stakeholders,” including holding community meetings on a regular basis.
The city says it has made efforts to improve safety in the area, including by increasing police patrols. But some neighbours say the continued issues at the park are a sign that not enough is being done to address the root causes of poverty and crime and improve safety in the area.
Problems worsening, neighbours say
When Vera Tarman moved into her home more than two decades ago, she loved that she lived right next to Barbara Hall Park and near The 519. But in the last few years, Tarman says the park has changed drastically.
“Now I don’t appreciate the park anymore … especially in the summertime when I should be enjoying the park,” she said. “It’s like ‘Oh, what’s going to happen?'”
Tarman says news reports of stabbings and other incidents at the park have put her on edge, along with theft and damage to her neighbours’ properties — including a recent fire on one neighbour’s front steps.
Tarman, a doctor who specializes in addictions medicine, says her professional life has also been affected. She runs her practice from her home. She says open drug use and drug dealing by her front door has made it difficult to provide a safe environment for her patients.
On the other side of the park, at Dudley’s Hardware store, manager Michael Broder says violence, vandalism and theft have increased significantly in the last few years.
“There’s perpetually problems at the street level, perpetually problems next door in the park,” Broder said.
“There’s not a day going by that we don’t have some sort of interaction that is really well above and beyond what should be expected in a retail environment.”
Last summer, Dudley’s nearly closed for good due to frequent vandalism.
In the years of data CBC Toronto analyzed, there were at least 44 calls categorized as some form of theft, robbery or break-and-enter, nearly half of which were categorized as robberies. Last year had the highest number of robbery-related calls with six.
City efforts to improve safety
A spokesperson for the City of Toronto says the city is “actively engaged” in addressing issues at Barbara Hall Park.
City crews visit the park twice daily to collect used needles and other harm reduction supplies, said Shane Gerard in an emailed statement. He said a de-escalation and crisis intervention team also visits the park twice a day, and that security staff patrol the park daily.
The city is also working on a plan to revitalize the park, with a goal of creating a new vision and design for the public space.
Community engagement on the plan is expected to wrap up in fall 2025, according to the city’s website. Though not all community members are in favour of the redesign focus.
“I think it’s throwing money at a very different problem,” said Perozzo. “I think there needs to be support for the community that’s currently using the park: the unhoused and drug users.”
The number of calls for service for overdoses at the park went up every year from 2019 through the end of 2023, according to the police data. There were nine such calls in 2019 and 57 in 2023
Calls for more supports
Staff at The 519 say they believe safety concerns at the park appear to be improving this summer compared to last.
Improving safety comes down to addressing basic needs like housing and healthcare, said Curran Stikuts, the centre’s director of advocacy and strategic communications.
“The world shows up at our doorstep. The issues that our neighbourhood is facing, that the broader downtown is facing, that Toronto as a whole are facing show up at our programs, at our services and our doorstep everyday,” Stikuts said.
“We respond to those needs as they arise. We don’t create them.”
In an emailed statement, local city Coun. Chris Moise said he is aware of ongoing safety concerns at Barbara Hall Park and is “committed to finding solutions to allow people to [feel] safe in their own community.”
He said the city needs to work with other levels of government to address root causes, including homelessness.