Forgotten Controversy? Re-Examining Police Reform Initiatives in Toronto
During the summer of 2020, the killings of multiple unarmed African Americans in the United States prompted global backlash toward policing systems, including in Canada. In Toronto, home of the Toronto Police Service (TPS), Canada’s largest police force, advocacy groups called for sweeping police reforms to better hold police responsible for crimes against the public and the systemic racism that was seen as pervasive in Toronto’s police force. The slogan “Defund the Police” was on many Canadians’ minds. It is a call to hold entire police forces accountable through sweeping budget reductions. This is perceived as necessary due to their failure to police in a manner that fostered public trust in the rule of law. TPS responded to the backlash with an action plan to address systemic racism and explore more transparent ways of policing, particularly in marginalized communities. Presently, information on police reform implementation in Toronto is hard to find. With exceptions, Canadian media has taken its foot off of the pedal in putting public pressure on police and policing systems. So, more than 2 years later, what steps have Toronto’s police force taken to rebuild public trust and build towards transparent, effective and anti-racist policing?
Black Lives Matter Toronto called for a reduction of 50% in TPS’ budget for 2021 which would have brought the amount down to $538,000,000 from its 2020 budget. While TPS had historically tended to increase its budget slightly on a year-to-year basis, Toronto city council approved for TPS to keep its budget of $1,076,000,000 for 2021. However, the next year, city council once again returned to increasing the TPS’ budget, this time by $24,800,000, bringing the 2022 operating budget to $1,100,000,000.
While some would object to the sheer size of the TPS’ budget, due to it being the lion’s share of Toronto’s total budget of approximately $10,000,000,000, others could perhaps justify increased or static expenses if the money was being directed towards reform initiatives. Instead, more than 90% of the TPS’ budget goes towards salaries, pensions, and benefits for officers. Graphics intended for Torontonians to understand the breakdown of the City of Toronto’s budget consistently downplay the size of the TPS’ budget and the extent of it that is directed towards pay, instead focusing on money directed towards more socially-palatable causes like additional EMS staff and expanded snow clearing services. This reflects a lack of initiative to foster dialogue with communities about how tax dollars are used to fund police services, indicating to community members that the City of Toronto and TPS are uninterested in justifying their budget or using community feedback to revise it.
One key initiative offered by the TPS in November 2020 was to publicly release its Body Worn Camera Policy, making the TPS one of the first North American cities to do so. This is a critical step towards building public trust through accountability. However, this does not make up for the fact that there are severe limitations to the effectiveness of bodycams in reducing police violence, encouraging more responsible policing and giving the community access to footage where police may have broken the law. In the US, body cam footage for controversial policing incidents, most notably the killings of unarmed Black men, is typically made available within hours. This allows for the public to have unbiased access to the narrative around the incident, preventing the police from withholding footage that could lead to public backlash. For the TPS, body camera footage for such incidents are instead sent to Ontario’s civilian police oversight board: The Special Investigations Unit (SIU). Once the SIU receives the footage, whether the footage is then made available to the public is left up to the discretion of the SIU. It is only upon the completion of the SIU’s investigation that the footage is released to the TPS, where Toronto’s police chief is responsible for choosing to release the footage based on the arbitrary qualifier of “compelling public interest.”
However, even when bodycam footage is released, experts are skeptical about bodycams’ ability to decrease incidences of criminal behaviour by police officers. Fareeda Adam, a lawyer for the Black Legal Action Centre in Toronto, stated in an interview with City News that “the research that we have so far tells us that police behaviour actually does not change.” This insight is bolstered by incidents like George Floyd’s death, where it was not officers’ bodycam footage that incited anger amongst the public but rather civilian cellphone footage. While the increased availability of bodycam footage could help foster trust in the police in marginalized communities, more initiatives are needed.
In the two years since protests sparked intense debate over policing reform in Canada’s largest city, little has been done to foster public trust in Toronto’s police. However, with greater justifications for the TPS’ budget or, alternatively, an increased share of the budget directed towards reform measures in addition to increased public access to bodycam footage, there is potential for the TPS to work towards an accountable, trustworthy policing system that meets the needs of all Torontonians.