What could city do if it spent less on police?
Motion for 10 per cent budget cut sparks debate over alternative ways to deliver services
There is no shortage of ideas for how to reallocate a 10 per cent cut in funding to the Toronto Police Service, but getting there won’t be easy, say experts.
Amotion to decrease the police budget by about $122 million is expected to be debated by city council at the end of the month.
The motion, drafted by Coun. Josh
Matlow and seconded by Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam, also asks the province to allow Toronto more oversight over the police budget, including the ability to conduct a line-by-line review.
Under the current process, council essentially approves a budget envelope for police — in 2020, it is $1.22 billion, by far the biggest item in the city’s $13.47billion operating budget. The police service then decides how that money will be spent. About 80 per cent of it is allocated to salaries.
And so the question becomes: Are there jobs police are doing that could be better and perhaps more cheaply done by others? Are there programs, like the mobile response teams in Oregon, made up of a medic and a nurse, that could be adapted to Toronto?
TORONTO— The agency that investigates police conduct in encounters resulting in serious injury will begin collecting race-based data later this year, it said on Thursday, but critics say the information by itself will have little effect on addressing racial inequities in policing.
Currently, the Special Investigations Unit only collects data on the age and gender of complainants. Recording new data will likely start Oct. 1, when new legislation is expected to take effect, spokesperson Monica Hudon said.
“Collecting race-based data will help identify and monitor racial disparity in access to the SIU’s services and outcomes, identify potential barriers within our agency, and increase transparency through public reporting,” Hudon said. “By identifying and monitoring systemic racial disparities, public sector organizations will be better able to close gaps, eliminate barriers, and advance the fair treatment of everyone.”
The SIU said it would publicly report on findings related to the data. A committee, it said, was working out the details to ensure collection is done sensitively and in a way that does not personally identify individuals.
Activists said such data is helpful in providing further evidence of the perennial overrepresentation of Black people in police killings. However, Syrus Marcus Ware, a core member of Black Lives Matter in Toronto, said collecting the data falls far short of what’s needed.
“We are fighting now to end the targeted policing of Black communities,” Ware said. “The collection of raced-base data, however helpful, is not going to replace the thundering calls to abolish the police system and completely reimagine how we deal with conflict, crisis and harm in our communities.”
The SIU change comes amid an international uproar over police brutality sparked by the killing of George Floyd. People across Canada have denounced police violence, calling for reforms.
Commissions and advocates have long pushed the recording of race information in light of studies and reports showing Black and Indigenous people were disproportionately at the blunt end of law enforcement.