First of all, let me begin even before we get to trial. We have had situations in Toronto where we have apprehended individuals with guns on our streets, loaded guns, and I have to tell you a little bit about doing that.
I've done that before, and my people do it every single day. We seize guns every day off our streets, loaded guns. Just in the past 24 hours we've seized five handguns and a shotgun, in very dangerous circumstances. Those are life and death events for my folks. I think you really have to be there and experience that with your heart pounding and you can barely see.
So when we do that and the individual is apprehended and sent to court, and within sometimes hours, rarely more than days, that same individual is released from custody and is back on the street—and these are actual events—and weeks later, we apprehend that same individual with a gun again and he's released again, and then a few weeks later, a third time, I think that undermines the confidence of my people, and it certainly undermines public confidence, in the determination of the criminal justice system to make our neighbourhoods safe.
People are working very hard and are very dedicated, and what we see is very long delays in bringing these matters to trial. We now, in the city of Toronto, experience up to 13 remands before we can actually conclude one of these criminal matters, and so often these individuals are out in the community. When we are trying to restore a sense of safety in neighbourhoods, when we take the most violent gun offenders and lock them up and they're back days later, people who have cooperated with us and assisted us in our investigation are terrorized by their presence in the neighbourhood.
So there is certainly a perception of a lack of consequences for those very serious offences, and the sentences that people have been receiving for carrying firearms are more reflective of the carrying of a loaded handgun in the city of Toronto as if it were a regulatory problem as opposed to a significant public safety problem.