Social media is creating 'virtual turf wars' moving shootings to public spaces, gun violence advocate

Guests: Louis March, Joe Cressey

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SOUNDCLIP

I'm damn mad about this stuff. And we're going around these people up. We just can't have these people on the street. They're causing mayhem, in otherwise a very peaceful city.

MF: Strong words from Toronto's mayor John Tory after the latest wave of violence in his city. Three shootings on three consecutive days in the sweltering heat of a downtown Toronto summer. On Saturday three people were shot in broad daylight, shortly before 8 p.m., in the entertainment district. The area was abuzz with people shopping or packed into the cafes, bars and restaurants that lined the streets. Two people were killed, both of them young men connected to the city's music scene. Jahvante Smart also known as Smoke Dawg and Kosi Modekwe. A vigil was held overnight to mourn Smoke Dawg. Nursing student Alexis Bungay was out walking with her boyfriend nearby when they heard the first shots rang out. And a warning, you might find some of this hard to listen to.

SOUNDCLIP

That took a second for it to kind of click in that those were gunshots. I thought it was fireworks at first but then people started running. So I called 911 immediately. And then we just, we just kind of ran and we ended up running towards the crime scene. And so I saw Smoke Dawg lying on the ground and my first instinct was to run towards him. When I got to him. He was breathing. His eyes were fluttering and he was kind of trying to move around. And I told them to stay still, to hold on, help is on his way. There was another CPR trained individual that was with Smoke Dawg. So I left smoke dog and I went over to where Koba was, and I informed the 911 operator that there was two gunshot wounds to this victim and informing them of all this information. It definitely, it definitely took me back. I was thinking to myself that I would have never had to have run from gunshots in my entire life living in Canada. You don't expect those kind of things to happen. I still love this city. It's just, it makes me more aware of my surroundings. Now you know like too many people are dying from gun violence in Toronto. It's, it's too sad. This morning I kind of woke up trembling because I relived the entire scene in my dream. Very chilling experience.

MF: Nursing student Alexis Bungay describing Saturday's gun fatalities in downtown Toronto. Then on Sunday, as Torontonians were grappling with the news of that shooting, another one this time in the downtown neighborhood of Kensington Market, four people were injured. And just hours ago, once again in one of the city's most frequented bar and restaurant neighborhoods King Street West. Another shooting leaving a man shot in the lower body. Police believe it was a drive by. Toronto has seen a total of 51 homicides and more than 200 shootings so far this year. The police chief is Mark Saunders.

SOUNDCLIP

We had officers in this area specifically and the fact that we always look at shootings and figure out what will happen as a result of those types of shootings and so we put plans in place. But we can't be everywhere all of the time and we also know that a lot of times a criminal element, those that are motivated to shoot, will wait until the police are gone or they'll look for a softer target or a softer area.

MF: Joe Cressey is the city councillor who represents Trinity Spadina which includes the neighborhoods where the shootings occurred over the weekend and he's live in the Toronto studio. Counselor, hello.

JOE CRESSEY: Good morning. What are you hearing from the people in these neighborhoods?

JOE CRESSEY: Well the neighborhoods that are being affected by this recent rash of gun violence, they're feeling trauma and they're scared. It's not unlike Alexis, the bystander who we just heard who was on the scene. It is that in the aftermath of an incident with gun violence, the families, the communities, the bystanders there is lingering trauma which goes on. And so there is a sense of fear in a city that remains safe when you look at all the numbers but it's hard to tell somebody that the city is safe after they've experienced or witnessed a shooting.

MF: Well that's just it in the head of the Police Union Mike McCormack said yesterday that "We have to face up to the fact that this is not a safe city at this time and we need to do something about it". How much of that do you accept?

JOE CRESSEY: Well listen, if the city of Toronto is amongst the safest cities in the world and it is on a factual basis the safest city in North America. That is a fact.

MF: But not one of the safest cities in Canada anymore. And shouldn't we be comparing Toronto to other Canadian cities.

JOE CRESSEY: Well on the metrics, in recent years, Toronto is and remains - based on robberies and gun shootings and on homicides - one of the safest cities in North America and in Canada.

MF: Would we want to be comparing ourselves to Detroit and L.A. and Chicago?

JOE CRESSEY: When you say that, when you say that Toronto was a safe city that is not to sugar-coat the experiences that we have because they are real. But it is to say in the aftermath of a shooting.

MF: I don't understand why you're saying it. Like there is a big problem here, isn't there? Why keep saying it's one of the safest cities in North America when we just lived through what we just lived through.

JOE CRESSEY: Well here is why would say it, Mike, is that gun violence in the city of Toronto is not new. We have had gun violence taking place every year for 10 years. What's changed in many ways is, not only the spike in gun violence, but where the gun violence is happening. It is far too often. In the past, gun violence has been in neighborhoods and for many Torontonians it was easy to look the other way and assume it would never come and hit them in the face. What we've seen in recent years, and certainly over the course of this weekend, is that gun violence actually happened in the entertainment district. It happened on King West. It happened in Kensington Market. So this gun violence that exists has come out into the open and it has shook and shaken Torontonians to the core. But the reason, Mike, that you have to say again and again and again that this is a safe city because you cannot succumb to fear. You have to, when you have experiences like this, you have to look to what are the next steps. How do we approach it. But you cannot succumb to fear on itself.

MF: Do you understand what's going on?

JOE CRESSEY: So here's what we know, in a rash of the recent shootings, is in many cases we're dealing with rivalries - and it's inter-neighborhood rivalries associated with gangs. But what's changed in recent years is that whereas in the past often this was associated with turf wars and wars over the illicit drug trade. Far too often now what we're seeing is that this is simply about being disrespected and standing up and resorting to violence as a way to combat that. And that's why when you look at this in the aftermath of a gun shooting, as a city we need to deal with the trauma and provide the counseling of support, that's one. On an enforcement side, we need to abet investigate to seek to get the perpetrators of violence off the streets. But the important thing here is that after the caution tape leaves, after the news interviews stop our work in a city to build stronger safer neighborhoods to tackle that gun violence at its source which is marginalization. That work continues.

MF: We asked the mayor John Tory to be part of the discussion today. Not available. And he issued a statement to the media yesterday saying that he's an advocate for tougher gun control, tougher bail conditions for gun crime and that modernizing the police will ensure that there are more officers patrolling the streets. What do you think of that approach?

JOE CRESSEY: Well you had Chief Saunders, our Toronto police chief, a clip there of him earlier and he said accurately you cannot put police everywhere. You cannot have an officer on every corner in the entire city of Toronto. And so effective community policing is enforcement is only as strong as it's partnership with neighborhoods and the trust neighborhoods have in policing. So the model of policing has to be community based. But more than that, gun violence is a symptom of other factors. The fact that we had one in ten adults living in poverty in the 1970s and it's one in four adults today. The fact that in 14 neighborhoods in the city of Toronto more than 40 percent of young people are living in poverty. Until we tackle the factors that underlie marginalization, we aren't going to be able to deal with gun violence.

MF: What does that approach look like? Because if you're looking at alleviating poverty that could take years and people don't have that time. If your loved one has been shot and killed, you don't want to wait years.

JOE CRESSEY: I know and this is what's so painful and I - in many of my neighborhoods in downtown when I'm dealing with families after a shooting - we want to solve it yesterday. If you could solve gun violence yesterday it would have been solved already. It is complex. There is no silver bullet. And so what does those strategies look like? How do we build stronger neighborhoods, mentorship programs, youth employment programs, building and investing in the social infrastructure and the social development plans to lift neighborhoods up, all the while doing that alongside effective enforcement that is at its core how we work to build stronger neighborhoods in a city like Toronto?

MF: Councillor, last week the police chief in Peel which is next door to Toronto, west of Toronto, said she felt that Ontario's restrictions on carding - it's an arbitrary street check basically by police. She says that had "empowered criminals: and contributed to the rise in violence. Would you agree with that?

JOE CRESSEY: I would respectfully and forcefully disagree. I can tell you, in my community, in downtown Toronto, the ability for the police to enforce the law is only as strong as the neighborhoods trust in police. So the ability for community police officers to actually undertake investigations, it requires support from communities themselves. It requires intelligence from communities themselves. And carding, racial profiling by design, it creates distrust and in effect undermines effective policing and enforcement.

MF: Joe Cressey is the city councillor for Ward 20 which is Trinity Spadina and that is where three separate shootings occurred over the weekend in Toronto. Councillor thank you very much.

JOE CRESSEY: Thank you, Mike.

MF: With us as well in studio in a moment, a community activists. First, Jooyoung Lee as a criminologist at the University of Toronto involved in a long-time research project on youth experiences with guns in Toronto.

SOUNDCLIP

In addition to understanding people's experiences with police and their experiences trying to navigate the labor market, our work is also delves into people's experiences with firearms. And one of the things that we're finding and again this is preliminary data, is that many young people are reporting just that that they can get a gun if they needed one. They talk about knowing someone or knowing someone who knows somebody who has access to a firearm. And so even though Canada has a very sensible gun control platform, there still seems to be a way in which young people who are in the city are able to access these guns.

MF: Well anti-gun violence advocates in the city say there are also other chronic factors behind the rise in shootings. Louis March is the founder of Zero Gun Violence movement. It's an advocacy group working to end gun violence across the Greater Toronto Area and he's in our Toronto studio. Louis hello to you.

LOUIS MARCH: Thank you.

MF: You were here just a few weeks ago.

LOUIS MARCH: That's correct.

MF: And here you are on a weekend where we've seen 11 people shot and these three shootings right downtown. What do you make of this recent spate of shootings?

LOUIS MARCH: Not much has changed in terms of trying to solve the problem. What we're seeing though is a lot of people getting excited and talking about the fact that the gun violence now is outside of the traditional areas. And I'm listening to how people are addressing the issue and they're not saying anything that was not said five 10 years ago. I don't see any new strategies. I don't see any acknowledgement of the change in the nature of the gun violence. There are certain factors that have changed dramatically.

MF: What sort of things have changed?

LOUIS MARCH: The things that have changed dramatically, first of all, the access to the guns they used to be one and two guns in a community with a gunmen or something right. Most of the kids these days they have one or two guns themselves. Where did the guns come from? How did the guns get into the community? Why they are so easily accessible? What has changed also dramatically is the caliber of the guns. Semiautomatics. That's changed the braising nature of the shootings. There's no restrictions there's no control as to where it's going to take place. Broad daylight, we saw it a couple of years back, we saw it last year, we see more of it this year. The age of the people using the guns, teenagers. And one of the big factors that has changed dramatically since the year of the gun when we had 52 homicides to gun violence is social media and how it embolds and celebrates and encourages violence. The social media impact is significant. These days we didn't have to deal with that in 2005.

MF: Does that go some way to explaining why the attacks are so brazen and why you're seeing younger and younger people responsible?

LOUIS MARCH: Exactly. And what we've seen right now is because the younger kids, there is no code, there's no control in terms of where you would settle a score. No we have moving targets. It, previously, I would sit down I would say 70 percent of the violence was taking place in Toronto Community Housing complexes. Today I can't say that. What has changed is that targets are moving. In the last few weeks we've seen Yorkville. We've seen Young and Dundas. We've seen the playground. We've seen Queen and Peter Street. These are moving targets now. So the targets are not at one place, the violence no has spread out of those traditional areas to communities where it usually takes place and that is what's scary and different.

LOUIS MARCH: Louis, you talk about social media and the changes on social media, and I know you know what you're talking about and you monitor it. But can you describe what it is for people who don't have that kind of access to well either social media or those social media accounts? Can you describe what it is we're seeing more than what we used to see?

LOUIS MARCH: We had a stabbing last year, in the downtown area and before the guy was arrested, he were already on social media talking about what he had done. In fact he was on CP24.

MF: Like boasting.

LOUIS MARCH: Boasting. The challenges we talk about the turf wars. The turf wars are no longer physical turf wars. Yes they are to some extent, to a great extent, but the turf where no our virtual turf wars in the air. You go out and you see something and you back it up.

MF: Is this what the counselor Joe Cressey was talking about as respect culture?

LOUIS MARCH: It is. And you can disrespect somebody through your social media outlets. And there's going to be a response. And what we've seen right now is how immediate is. Someone goes on and says something they're going to get a reaction or respond very quickly. So you don't have that time anymore to work out the logistics. You just go and you do it. And if the target does moving, the one last night apparently was a drive by. So wherever the target is, the violence will go later. So everything has changed dramatically. Now we expect to see some changes in how the mayor response to it, but he can't be using the same cards he used 10-15 years ago.

MF: Let me come to that and meet in a moment. Some people will brush these aside and say 'Oh it's gang related'. How would you respond to that reaction?

LOUIS MARCH: I think I'm going to go back to Joe. It's about respect. And gangs themselves talk about structure, organization, authority, communication. These are just loose group of friends that say 'well we're going to have to defend that because I was disrespected'. Gang activity talks about organized response and engagement in criminal activity. We're not seeing that. It's very loosely gatherings of friends and people that are doing things.

MF: You took issue with the mayor a moment ago. Let's hear something else from what he's been saying. This was on Sunday after two of the weekend shootings.

SOUNDCLIP

I talked last week about the fact for example that we've got to get a lot tougher on letting people out on bail who have previous history with gun offenses. I just don't think they belong on the streets and I've talked to Chief Saunders this morning. And I know that they are hard at work on this one and some of the other shootings we've experienced this year.

LOUIS MARCH: Look John Tory is a politician extraordinaire. He's very good at what he does. He should be in school teaching in politics and gamesmanship because that's what he's actually doing. The issue of gun violence is not a surprise. The rise in gun violence is not a surprise. We saw 52 homicides to gun violence in 2005. In 2013 we saw 22 because there was a massive infusion of support into communities. In 2014 we started seeing the change taking place. Between 2014 and 2016 we saw almost a hundred percent increase in gun violence, incidents, occurrences and homicide. And we did not see any response from the political leaders including John Tory. So for him to come now and talk about - he's won - he's upset about what's going on. He's going to bring in 200 extra police officers and stuff. It's very simplistic. It's not reflective of the magnitude of the problem, the urgency of it and understanding what has changed.

MF: So as opposed to getting tough what needs to come from a community level up, supported by institutions?

LOUIS MARCH: The first the first word in community safety is 'community', it is not 'police'. Police will not solve this problem. What are you going to put? The police officers on every street corner as Joe was saying? It's not going to solve the problem. The people that are pulling the trigger know they do not fear the police. In fact some of them don't even mind dying. In the sense that we saw somebody who was 20 years old, the other day we said happy birthday to him, he said he didn't think he was going to make it to 20.

MF: Here in Toronto?

LOUIS MARCH: In Toronto. This is 2018. This is not new. The signs have been out there. What is really frustrating to us and angers us is the lack of resolve by the political leaders in talking about how safe the city is. This is not real.

MF: Louis March founder of Zero Gun Violence movement. It's a group dedicated to ending gun violence in the Greater Toronto Area. Louis thanks for coming in.

LOUIS MARCH: Thanks for having me.

MF: And the CBC News is next and then as accusations fly that migrant rescue ships are colluding with human traffickers and smugglers, we're going out onto the waters of the Mediterranean. Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

The body on the boat: The plight of migrants in the Mediterranean, and the toll on those who try to save them

MF: Hello. I'm Mike Finnerty. You're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme].

MF: In early June, the humanitarian ship the Aquarius left the port in Catania in Sicily for its fortieth mission of rescuing migrants on the Mediterranean Sea. Less than two days later, it had pulled more than 600 people from crammed, flimsy boats to safety. But on its return to Catania Italian officials denied the vessel port. It is in Italy's new populist government accuses NGO rescue ships of colluding with traffickers and argues Italy has taken in enough migrants. After days stranded at sea, Spain finally offered its distressed passengers safe harbor. Meanwhile the death toll in the Mediterranean sea rises to more than 1000 people this year. In November, CBC correspondent Megan Williams was aboard the Aquarius. She spent 16 days with the crew patrolling the coast of Libya searching for people in distress. She wanted to gather the stories of those from countries across Africa and the Middle East; the lives that they were hoping to build and the ones they were trying to escape. This is her documentary Onboard. It was first aired in April. And a warning some of the details in this story are disturbing.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Sea]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: We're about 25 nautical miles from the coast of the North African country of Libya in a small boat with the calm, almost flat Mediterranean Sea stretched out around us like an immense blue dessert. An hour or so ago we could see a short dark line squiggling on the horizon. Now, in the near distance is a rubber boat. Long and blue and crammed with life.

[Sound: Walkie-talkie “No medical cases…”]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: This is my 11th day onboard the Aquarius migrant rescue ship. And even though this is my third rescue, the sight of this boat, with too many heads to count rising and falling in the middle of a vast stretch of water, still stuns me.

[Sound: Lowing sending boat]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Beside me, the team lowers a small rescue boat alongside the Aquarius and drives off toward the rubber boat. From the deck, I watch in the distance the rescue team hand out lifejackets. Carefully, the loading of people starts, a dozen at a time, onto the small boat to bring them here to the safety of the Aquarius. Then the wave of humanity washes over us.

[Sound: Baby crying]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: First, babies, one after another thrust forward into the arms of the rescuers and medical staff. One worker comforts an infant while another lifts off the mother's life jacket so she can finally hold her.

[Sound: “Hello, welcome…”]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: A nurse welcomes the mums on board as they struggle unsteadily up the ladder. They're from the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Mali, and other African countries. Some drop to their knees to kiss the boat. Others cry out thank you. All of them are dazed.

[Sound: Woman crying]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Huddling together under blankets, almost wailing with relief. Among the crowd is Dominika Wanczyk, shaking hands and hugging people as they step on board.

[Sound: “Welcome… thank you…”]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Looking into the eyes of each person gauging what shape they're in.

[Sound: “How are you? Fine? You’re fine?”]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: She has dark blond hair and a wide, friendly face. The Canadian is one of the three MSF nurses on board. Among the fray, Seif Khirfan, also with Medicins Sans Frontieres, the doctor tends to the weakest, those who are malnourished, who have been tortured, or suffer from neglected chronic illnesses.

[Sound: “She was in the hospital…”]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Like this woman who says she was hospitalized before Libya.

[Sound: Walkie talkie]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: 171 people were squeezed in that rubber boat, so tight they couldn't move. And, we learn, a body, too.

[Sound: Body bag]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: The rescue team puts on rubber gloves and makes one last trip to the almost empty migrant boat to bring back the corpse. It's a woman. Young.

[Sound: Singing]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Then, those who made it to us alive spill out their thanks across the water. While Seif, the doctor, braces for the post mortem, one that will leave him reeling. I've been reporting on the migrant situation in Italy for more than a decade. And I've heard dozens of accounts of the grim journey across the Mediterranean; people fleeing violence in Syria and Africa, escaping despotic regimes, and crippling poverty. And more recently, Libya, where migrants say they're kidnapped, tortured, raped and enslaved. The numbers of people crossing to Italy on flimsy boats have shot way up in the last few years to almost 200,000 a year. A lot of the boatloads are rescued by patrolling European naval ships with the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome in command. Still, thousands of people drown each year, and so the simple mission of the humanitarian groups MSF and SOS Mediterranee on board is to save lives at sea. But their efforts are not without controversy, I'll come back to that. First, let me share with you, life aboard the Aquarius.

[Sound: “Welcome on board…”]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Eleven days earlier, I climbed aboard bright orange boat docked at the far end of the port of Catania, Sicily. This is the Aquarius, a humanitarian boat run by MSF and SOS Mediterranee. It has about two dozen cabins, a dining room, and small clinic. Laura Garel with SOS shows me around.

LAURA GAREL: This is the shelter, where women and children stay after a rescue…

MEGAN WILLIAMS: The women's shelter is a long, grey, low ceilinged room with supply bags for the migrants stacked at one end. Someone's taped up the outline of a boat, an anchor, fish and even the words 'welcome' in an effort to make it feel friendlier. But in the days ahead, the room will be so overrun with people; you can't even see the walls. The next days, bad weather keeps us stuck at port. So, we run through drills: CPR, hypothermia, fire, and person overboard. The time in port also gives me a chance to learn something about who signs up for this kind of mission.

SEIF KHIRFAN: Numbers are very high. Sometimes you have 700 people here. So we try to triage to the more urgent ones we see first…

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I sit down with Doctor Seif Khirfan in the small clinic he runs with three MSF nurses.

SEIF KHIRFAN: A lot wounds with respiration, maybe pneumonia…

MEGAN WILLIAMS: He's Egyptian, from Cairo and this is first volunteer stint with MSF. He learned about the group when he saw them in action seven years ago during the Arab Spring uprising in Tahrir Square.

SEIF KHIRFAN: I think I was 28-29 working in the field hospitals and journalists didn't have access into the square because of security, so I started filming what was happening and sending footage outside, so when I looked at MSF and saw their history that they were made by a group of journalists and doctors, I thought wow this sounds like something that would suit me. I really connected with it at the beginning so I was involved as a protester the first day, and I went down with a sign that had my salary, I was a resident back then and I got paid 200 Egyptian pounds which is like 15 euros a month something like this Fifteen. It was really really low. I got shot actually with one of those shot guns from a distance so I ended up having 25 little metal pellets pierce my body.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Seif is a small, fit, handsome man with olive skin, dark hair, and wide gentle eyes. When he applied to MSF, Seif specifically asked to be assigned to the Aquarius.

SEIF KHIRFAN: Part of that was because in Egypt a lot of people take this trip. They go on boats from Alessandria and they do the suicide mission of crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe, and every winter we'd hear news about boat drowning, 50 people losing their lives, I did a news story on those specific people leaving from near Alexandria. We went to this village where maybe half the kids there have already attempted doing this trip. And some of them were on boats that drowned, but still wanted to go again because there life is really bad. So I was really interested to see the journey, you know, the other side, what happens to them at sea and what happens when they disembark. And I thought maybe if they see someone who reminds them of home maybe it would be comforting for them, someone who speaks the same language.

DOMINIKA WANCZEK: I was born in Poland, my parents decided to leave, that they wanted more opportunities.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Nurse Dominika Wanczek tells me about her background and why her empathy for those who flee their homelands comes so naturally. Her parents claimed political asylum in Berlin just after the fall of the wall.

DOMINIKA WANCZEK: And Canada first country that sponsored us. I feel very grateful that I got to grow up in Canada.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Dominika is from Calgary. She's just 32, but she's already an experienced nurse with MSF with postings in South Sudan and other African hotspots. She admits those were tough seeing children starving.

DOMINIKA WANCZEK: As a nurse you always have a bit of a protective barrier which you need to be able to do your job to focus on medical needs, but yeah it was a pretty surreal experience to see kids in this state and sometimes to see kids like this and think they were still alive, it's a terrible sight, I mean these are kids are kids, but they’re lifeless and apathetic and literally starving.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: But the MSF tour with the Aquarius will be different. It's her first time on a boat, treating migrants. And she says, she's nervous about being out at sea.

DOMINIKA WANCZEK: I mean, I would definitely be afraid to have a rescue that goes badly, I mean we're out here to save lives and if something goes wrong, that’s a very scary thought.

[Sound: Horn]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Finally, the worst of the weather lifts. The crew hauls in the cables mooring the boat. It's a weird feeling as we head out. Both exciting to finally be going, but also dread at what we face.

[Sound: Waves]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: The days at sea drag out. Some days the waves are so big, it's hard to walk straight. Even when their smaller, it's still too choppy for human traffickers to risk launching the flimsy rubber boats. So, we patrol back and forth, sometimes catching glimpses of dusty skyscrapers in Tripoli in the distance and big oil rigs just off the coast. In the evenings, to pass the time, there's group exercise on deck, boxing down in the hull's tiny gym and one night music with Seif playing the drums.

[Sound: Music]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Then, on the fourth day at sea, mid-morning, in what seems like an instant, the winds drop and the water turns to glass. The stillness feels ominous. It's strange to be in this beautiful gentle ocean and yet know that the calm and peacefulness mean people are going to be putting themselves in danger. Cramming into overloaded boats launched into the sea. And there's also the awareness that below the water's surface lies a kind of cemetery. In 2017 alone, more than 3,000 migrants drowned in these waters. And those are just the ones we know about.

[Sound: Footsteps]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I climb up to the bridge where Rocco Aiello stands with his binoculars pressed against his eyes, on the lookout for migrant boats. Rocco's a rescue volunteer from Calabria. He's a boxer, with a thick, greying ponytail and years of experience at sea. Last night, after dinner, we stayed at the table talking the accusations of some politicians against humanitarian boats like the Aquarius. That the boats are a "pull factor” in other words, their very presence at sea encourages migrants to risk the passage. I've seen studies that show that's not true, that migrants risk the crossing whether humanitarian boats are there are not. But in the past year, the accusations have gotten uglier. That the humanitarians are actually colluding with traffickers by taking phone calls directly from them or of being "migrant taxis." I asked Rocco if the Aquarius ever got calls directly from traffickers and well, he got angry. The boat never gets instructions from anyone but the headquarters in Rome he said. And even asking that, he told me, was out of line. It's an accusation that everyone on the boat is very, very sensitive to. Rocco puts down the binoculars.

ROCCO: Non-English speaking language

MEGAN WILLIAMS: See how calm the water is, he says. We're going to have a rescue by morning.

[Sound: Knock on door]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: He was right. At 5:30 AM, Laura wakes me up.

LAURA GAREL: We have potential rescues and you need to get ready.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Alright. I get dressed and head upstairs. I ask how far the migrant boat is Laura tells me about half an hour.

LAURA GAREL: 30 minutes.

MEGAN WILLIAMS:: A Spanish naval ship has already reached the rubber dingy and handed out lifejackets. But the Marine Rescue Coordination Center in Rome has ordered the Aquarius to carry out the actual rescue. Out on deck, Seif is getting ready to go out with the first contact boat.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: There are no reports of medical cases so far?

SEIF KHIRFAN: So far we haven’t got any reports. It should be a simple rescue.

[Sound: Lowering boat, walkie talkie “Pull Away!” Cries from boat in distance]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: From the deck, I can make out faint cries for help in the distance. Then, the first inflatable raft returns with a boatload of women and children.

[Sound: “Ready for the stretcher… feet first.”]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: And up they tumble.

[Sound: Babies wailing, women chanting]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: We the crew, medical staff, even I help, giving them their bags of water and high energy biscuits. We help them strip off their wet clothes two or three layers. In the Libyan detention camps, they were allowed no possessions and had to wear their extra clothes.

[Sound: Women sobbing]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I try to hide my shock at the sight of a bone-thin women covered with scraps of seaweed. So weak, she's barely kept on her feet by her sisters. Later, I find out she's been tortured in Libya.

[Sound: “Let’s just change her clothes…”]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Then the men arrive, also from Africa. Hugging and laughing and crying too. They receive their bags with fresh clothing. They all put on the same black tracksuits with white stripes up the side, the migrant uniform. Yet, within minutes, it seems, the towels they've been given become hipster scarves and African head wraps with style and flare. And I'm amazed, though shouldn't be, by the human capacity need for individual expression and beauty in the worst circumstances. People wanting the same things we all want.

[Sound: Baby crying]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Later, out on deck, I sit with Alima, a 19-year-old from the Cote d'Ivoire. She's holding the baby of a friend who needs to sleep. Despite having spent two months in Libyan prison camps, she has an unsuppressable teenage energy. She's also seven months pregnant.

Tuesday July 3, 2018 Full Transcript

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