Chief must earn trust

Peel Regional Police Chief Jennifer Evans has been granted two more years on the job.

It’s an opportunity many thought the controversial chief would never get. And if Evans doesn’t move quickly to reassure the diverse residents of Peel that her force respects, represents and protects them all, regardless of race, colour or cultural background, it will be an opportunity she didn’t deserve.

On Tuesday, the Peel Police Services Board voted to extend Evans’s contract until October 2019, albeit with no chance of renewal beyond that.

It was a surprising, even disappointing, move given the board’s frequent clashes with Evans on matters of racial equality and diversity.

Evans has remained a notoriously staunch supporter of police street checks (also known as carding), refusing to suspend the highly criticized practice even after the police board requested that she do so.

In 2015, the Star found that Black people were three times more likely to be carded by police in Brampton and Mississauga than white people.

In 2016 the Police Services Board called for an independent audit of diversity and equity practices, after an antidiscrimination group publicly accused Evans of “failing” the local community on such issues as carding and the representation of visible minorities on the police force.

Evans almost immediately pushed back against the board in a letter to Chair Amrik Ahluwalia, calling it a “serious concern” that the audit was approved based on “unfounded allegations.”

This was only one in a string of incidents that has tarnished the image of the Peel police under Evans’s watch.

In April, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ruled that Peel police had discriminated against a veteran officer of South Asian origin on the basis of his race when they failed to recommend him for promotion.

Staff Sgt. Baljiwan (BJ) Sandhu had told the tribunal that officers would taunt him with racist cartoons and nicknames such as “Gunga Din” and “Ghandi.”

The tribunal ruled that Peel police “generally devalued” police work in the South Asian community.

Most troubling, however, was Evans’s unwillingness to address or even acknowledge the concerns of the community she’s meant to serve.

Last year she commissioned a survey of Brampton and Mississauga residents that found a staggering 93 per cent of respondents were “satisfied” with the work of Peel police.

The results and method were called into question by community members, activists, police board chair Ahluwalia, and even Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, who all expressed doubt that the survey adequately represented Peel’s diverse population.

The deepening divisions between the Peel police force and parts of the communities it serves pose a threat both to social justice and to public safety. Evans cannot bridge the gap by ignoring it.

The chief has two years left to show the population of Peel they can trust the police officers paid to serve them. Her best chance is to acknowledge her force’s past failures and get to work righting wrongs.

The deepening divisions between the Peel police force and parts of the communities it serves pose a threat both to social justice and to public safety