Jon Ferry

Downtown can be hell or haven

Night fever is nowhere for cops on patrol

TORONTO – A sorry brunette, she strolls sadly by the bench at Grosvenor and Yonge Streets, beside more brazen young creatures of the evening.

It's 7:10 p.m. She has no money, no identification, no shoes and a jacket seven sizes too big.

Ashen with apprehension and lack of sleep, she eases into the rear of a police car which itself has seen better days and happier dames.

She spits out answers in mannish fashion.

She's 16, she was born Aug. 14, 1961; Leo is her birth sign; she's just arrived from White Rock, B.C.; her parents know about it; the only clothes she has are the ones she's standing up in; she's staying with nobody.

It's a virtuoso performance for any teen-ager who's just hitch-hiked 3,000 miles.

But a half dozen years of probing Toronto's downtown pecadilloes has made a skeptic out of mustachioed Anthony Mohr, a euchre-playing Metro police constable from 52 division.

I think you're lying, young lady, he replies to no one's surprise, least of all that of his Scottish-born patrol buddy, Constable David Enns.

What did I do? I didn't do anything, she complains.

Around the corner on Grenville, a concerned, pipe-smoking citizen from Oshawa is directing the constables toward a man asleep on a stone porch at No. 27, two empty bottles near him.

Constable Enns walks over to wake the wino.

Father-like, Constable Mohr leans over to question the overwrought girl in the back of the unmarked cruiser.

The words, the tears spill out. She's 14; her parents live in Toronto; she's been on the run for five days from a Newmarket group home; she's been panhandling for a living; she hasn't made any money today — and she wants to go home.

What's wrong with this group home? asks Constable Enns, now back in the driver's seat.

It ain't my parents, that's what's wrong.

How come you're in a group home in the first place? Because I ran away from home, but I didn't know what I had then, but now I'm just going to get chucked away in 311 (the juvenile shelter at 311 Jarvis St.) Her parents can't control her at home, says Constable Mohr.

That's what they think, she says, just because of what happened last summer.

What happened last summer? I used to run away all the time.

Why did you have to run away? I stopped, but now I want to go home so badly, but they won't let me.

The constables take Miss Leo back to 52 division offices on Dundas Street near University Avenue, where Constable Keith Brown, the brown-suited youth officer, later says she has a psychological problem.

It's sad listening to some of these kids. You can't help but feel a certain amount of remorse, and justifiably so, says Constable Brown.

Her father, he says, is a super fellow who did everything he could to keep his pert-looking daughter from running away until the courts had to intervene.

She likes the night life out there in the city, and come hell or high water she's going to be there, he says. This night she will spend at 311.

Back once more on night patrol, Constable Mohr is delineating the sexual geography of the city, volunteering an explanation of why female prostitutes parade streets east of Yonge Street while the homosexual hookers stick to the west side on streets such as Grosvenor and Grenville.

I guess they (the female hookers) want to catch the setting sun.

The 31-year-old father of two small children says that prostitution is something you can push, but can't push over.

All you do is just move them (the prostitutes) from one place to another place, Constable Mohr says.

The recent clean-up of Yonge Street body-rub parlors hasn't really killed the germs, it's just made the street look more respectable. It hasn't made it look as loose. If you look respectable, the people act a little bit more respectable; it's helped that way.

A second female in distress, meanwhile, has deposited herself at a bar on Yonge just above Shuter Street.

At least 25 years older than Miss Leo, she is a foul-mouthed, blond Aquarius with runny mascara, a red hat, a gold bracelet and a yearning for John Travolta.

Her problem is that she doesn't want to go home — at least to her husband Jack and her newborn child — and is employing colorful language to make her point.

The policemen spirit this well-watered flower outside and into the cruiser.

She coos and claws at Constable Mohr. Do I seem completely out of hand? she asks, without waiting for an answer.

Jack has only given her one day off in 21/2 years and she intends to make the most of it. The policemen drive around, trying to find a John Travolta movie.

They succeed at the Imperial Six cinema. Mrs. Aquarius shuffles out, somewhat reluctantly. See the problem of trying to be too nice, sighs Constable Mohr.

It's an eight-hour shift for the policemen, with an hour's break for a takeout lunch and some euchre.

By 2:15 a.m., the constables have arrested no real criminals, although they've cooled down a street altercation, checked out a tripped burglar alarm, chased a man gone berserk with a baseball bat.

It is, says Constable Mohr, a night of typically nothing. Even the hookers seem to be absent from The Track, Toronto's prostitution row bounded by Church, Jarvis, Isabella and Gloucester Streets.

The car drifts lazily along Gerrard Street East, past four youths, when Constable Mohr suspects a drug deal.

His partner hits the brakes, then puts the auto into a fast reverse.

Constable Mohr springs from the car. He grabs the throat of one of the youths, but no drugs are found in his mouth. Another cruiser pulls up.

The four youths are spreadeagled, patted, probed and arrested amid whimperings of innocence.

Drugs found by Constable Enns beside a street pillar are later analyzed as saccharin pills, dyed purple to make them look like LSD.

The choked youth, a man wanted by police, has had a bitter, sweet swallow.

As arrests go, it's not pretty. But neither is Saturday night, in downtown Toronto.