Mr. Lee, let me say, first of all, thank you for your comments, because I believe we have provided an effective policing response. And as I said, I like to give credit to my partners in this. The community partners we've had have been courageous and hard-working and have done a great job as well.
The laws that we have used have not yet been tested in court. They haven't done their job. That part hasn't worked yet. We've worked our tails off in the past several months and none of this has come to trial. We've worked very hard using the existing laws to bring people before the courts, to keep people in custody, and when they get released, we're back on their door. We see them first thing in the morning and last thing at night to make sure they're complying with the conditions on which they were released.
As I've indicated, almost one arrest in seven that we make in the city is because they're not complying with those conditions. Fully 68% of the people we arrested for firearms offences last year were out on bail. So we keep working hard at that.
The part that you say...the effectiveness of these laws. We haven't seen that they're effective yet. Quite frankly, they haven't done anything because we haven't had a trial on any of these matters. We're still before the courts.
We're hoping that we can have an effective response from the criminal justice system at the back end, that sentencing will be effective. So we've worked very hard, and I think on our part of the job we've done our very best and we've had a positive effect. If we keep on arresting them and bringing them to court, and if there are not real consequences for those conducts, then they'll be back on our streets.
Keeping them in custody so far this summer has proven that when these individuals are incapacitated from their ability to be in the community, from carrying guns and shooting each other and shooting innocent people, when we have them in jail and they're incapacitated from that, our streets are safer. It remains to be seen, after we get to trial and they're convicted, whether the criminal justice system is prepared to keep them in custody and continue to keep our communities safe. If it's not, and if they come back out, we'll keep working hard to do our part.