Saunders quitting is this city’s second chance
The hiring of Mark Saunders as Toronto police chief in 2015 was a missed opportunity. His unexpected early departure gives Toronto a rare second chance.
The Toronto police services board could have picked a futuristic chief, schooled in community policing, committed to the eradication of racial profiling and carding, content with bold new approaches to serve and protect and a modern, collaborative ethos that welcomes dissent and reform.
Instead, it opted for the status quo — a Black chief, yes, the city’s first — but that was the extent of the revolution five years ago.
Now, nothing short of a transformational police leader is acceptable — not with the world convulsing over the deadly and brutal interactions of police with citizens, particularly Black men. Steady as she goes will not fly as an attribute of the top cop. Bold doesn’t begin to define the ask.
So, the police board has caught a break. Instead of being stuck with a dinosaur at the helm during a time when the crescendo mounts for 21st-century non-military, less violent cops, the board can set the table for the new era now emerging.
Its choice — Toronto’s 11th chief — will be installed at a moment in history when the universe demands change. Not just change, but reform. Not reform, but revolution.
Take body cameras on police officers, for example. Sorry, old news. Both Saunders and Mayor John Tory offered them up for early implementation. No one shouted for joy. This is not a bargaining chip. Body cameras are a given. And they better not be turned off just when the police-citizen interaction gets interesting.
Freeze the police budget. Sorry, old news. What critics and protesters and lawmakers and even police chiefs are saying now is not freeze police budgets, but reduce it. Actually, defund the police. Break up the construct and start again because the system is broken.
Cops are heroic figures cemented in our brains through popular culture and lore. But clearly we are asking too much of them. Instead of hiring social workers and counsellors for schools, we station police officers with students. Rather than fund programs to help couples and families handle conflicts, we send in police to settle domestic disputes. We release people with mental health issues into the community and expect police to engage them without using deadly force.
Redirecting money routinely sent to the police over the past two or three decades will be controversial. But turning back the forces pushing for this won’t be easy. Many activists have recommended the same year after year without traction. Suddenly, the demands are becoming mainstream. The chief becomes critical in guiding public debate without pandering to the police unions.
By leaving early, eight months ahead of time and, seemingly, on his own terms — which really means he is not being hounded out and tossed aside amid media speculation about his future — for once, Saunders is ahead of the curve.
Saunders has been an enigma.
The city’s first Black chief, he was the establishment choice because the alternative, Peter Sloly, was too reform-minded.
Actually, Sloly was too uppity for the police brass. The normal microaggressions and slights and racist attitudes baked into the system did little to derail this Negro. Toronto police didn’t know what to make of this independent, tough-minded, smart, progressive man. So, the union backed the other Black guy.
Who is going to complain, they smirked. You are getting your Black chief, no? We got what we bargained for. Saunders backed carding — the most outrageous and hurtful policy of randomly stopping Black people not suspected of a crime but just to build a database. And then, when it became a political embarrassment for Tory and the mayor dropped it, Saunders dropped it, too.
Yes, a week ago Saunders was seen taking a knee with antiBlack racism protesters who have joined the global demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd, a policeman’s knees on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Good on you, chief. Imagine how credible that would play now if you’d spent a few hours with Black Lives Matter during their occupation outside police headquarters in March 2016.
The new chief must be innovative, a thought-leader in policing who has actually effected difficult change, not just talked about it on a resumé. And there is a base requirement to understand the impact of anti-Black racism and how it intersects with law enforcement.
He or she must be able to hear the calls to defund police and not freak out with scaremongering about what that means. Instead, tell us what we can do differently to change policing.
Smart and experienced is a base requirement, not a selling point. You don’t even get an interview without that. Then, show us what you’ve already done to effect the change you promise.
A candidate for chief can’t profess to care about sexual harassment in the Toronto Police Service yet show no evidence, month by month, of speaking about this, challenging colleagues, demanding change, holding them to account. Fail to do that as a deputy or superintendent and we don’t need you as our top cop.
The world’s changed. Whether by design, instinct or some other urging, Saunders got out of the way just in time. For Toronto’s good, the police services board must make this second chance count.