MistyWaters
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Toronto homicide squad to be overhauled under new leader after record-breaking year of killings
Published December 31, 2018 Updated 10 minutes ago
New Toronto police homicide squad leader revamping unit, calls 2019 ‘decision-making year’
In July, Idsinga became the acting head of the homicide squad and began planning his transformation of the team.
“We will have a lot of new faces and a lot of movement within the squad,” he says, noting six detectives have already been brought to help alleviate the workload of the unit’s 48 detectives."
Idsinga is also starting a video analysis unit to help ease the squad’s workload.
“The nature of homicide work in 2018 involves an awful lot of video surveillance,” he says. “To properly extract that video surveillance, to properly analyze that surveillance, to make it presentable for court, it’s a lot of work and is labour intensive.”
"Another big case that has dogged the squad is the unsolved late 2017 murders of billionaire couple Barry and Honey Sherman.
The family has blasted the force for numerous alleged errors and lapses, and hired its own team of former homicide detectives, Ontario’s former chief pathologist and forensic experts to perform a separate private probe. The family recently announced a $10-million reward for information that would solve the case and proposed a “public-private partnership” with police where the shadow team would work alongside the force.
Idsinga called the proposal “interesting” but said it would involve onerous restrictions. He welcomed any tips and information but wouldn’t go for a situation where police would have to share information with the family’s team."
This ought to leave a few people who are suspects of unsolved homicides wondering if they’re being featured as a star performer for TPS.
...”The nature of homicide work in 2018 involves an awful lot of video surveillance,” he says. “To properly extract that video surveillance, to properly analyze that surveillance, to make it presentable for court, it’s a lot of work and is labour intensive.”