Police board report takes ‘baby steps,’ say critics urging reform

Chair recommends anti-racism training, expanding specialized mental-health response teams

Responding to increasing demands for systemic changes to policing, a new report to the Toronto police board recommends anti-racism training for officers, the “urgent” expansion of the force’s specialized mental-health response teams and greater public input in the budget process.

“Despite our best efforts, we recognize that much work remains to be done,” board chair Jim Hart said in a report released Wednesday that says the police board “must be a catalyst, along with others, for the examination of reforms and changes that are in the city’s best interests.”

But even as the police board chair acknowledged the proposed changes were just the beginning, the measures were criticized as falling far short of demands for systemic reform, which include calls for dramatic reductions to police spending and large-scale changes to stop police-involved deaths of Black and Indigenous people.

“This is taking baby steps. This is not what we need — we need bold leadership,” said Nigel Barriffe, president of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations.

Barriffe is calling for the “immediate” reallocation on funds currently spent on policing to community services.

“We are at a moment of reckoning. The trust is not there between the community and the police,” Barriffe said.

The seven-member civilian board will debate the recommendations at a virtual meeting Friday, its first sitting since outrage over the police-involved deaths of Black and Indigenous people has sent thousands of protesters to the streets in Canada and United States, demanding police be reformed, dismantled or “defunded.”

Hart’s report to the board acknowledges the recommended changes are not a “panacea,” but calls them “concrete steps that can be taken in the immediate while additional work is undertaken.”

That message was echoed by Mayor John Tory, who said in a statement Wednesday the proposals are “first steps” to be taken immediately.

“I fully support accelerating the pace of police reform in Toronto and I believe the recommendations going to the board this week will result in real tangible changes,” Tory said.

But some of Hart’s recommendations came as a surprise to those directly involved, including Notisha Massaquoi, cochair of the police board’s antiracism advisory panel. Hart’s report suggests the panel, which was struck after the fatal police shooting of Black mentally ill man Andrew Loku, be made permanent. This was made “without any consultation with the advisory panel,” Massaquoi said, undermining her confidence in the recommendations. That lack of consultation makes the proposed changes look “more like a (public relations) issue,” she said.

A look at some of the recommendations, which will be debated at the Friday meeting:

Expansion of mobile crisis teams and development of new models for mentalhealth response The board recommends the expansion “on an urgent basis” of the Mobile Crisis Intervention Teams (MCIT), which pair a mental-health nurse with a specially trained police officer to respond to people experiencing crisis. The report notes the program minimizes the number of emergency-room visits and “limits reliance on the criminal justice system.”

“Currently, the MCIT Program is unable to meet the realtime demand for mobile crisis intervention that exists daily in Toronto,” reads the report.

The report also recommends police work with the city to develop new community-based models for mental-health emergencies that can be delivered by experts such as trained nurses or social workers, and “not necessarily involve police officers.” If a new approach is found and the demand for regular police presence goes down, funding could be reallocated from the MCIT program, the board said.

The recommendations follow renewed calls for changes to how emergency mental-health calls are handled, following the death of 29-year-old Afro-Indigenous woman Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who fell to her death in the presence of Toronto police last month. Her mother says her daughter was in mental health distress; police say they were attending an assault call involving knives. The death is currently under investigation by the Special Investigations Unit.

Jennifer Chambers, executive director of Empowerment Council, an advocacy group for clients of addiction or mentalillness services, said there is broad support for creating community-based emergency services for people in mentalhealth crisis. But right now, there is a “critical” lack of resources.

“The result is that the only service with the human resources to show up within minutes when people are in crisis is the police. The public and the police want alternatives,” she said.

John Sewell, former Toronto mayor and member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, said the expansion of the MCIT program is good, but questioned why these units cannot be first responders.

Toronto police have said MCIT units cannot be first responders in crisis situations because it could put the mentalhealth nurse in jeopardy.

Greater public disclosure of the police budget, and additional public consultation The board recommends greater disclosure requirements regarding the Toronto police budget, which has in recent years topped $1 billion. The report suggests the chief provide a line-by-line breakdown of the existing budget at the outset of the process, and that “enhancements” be made to public consultation about the budget.

The report does not directly address calls to cut the police budget. In a recent interview, Hart told the Star that he didn’t think the police budget was too high.

Sandy Hudson, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, called the line-by-line recommendation “the bare minimum — this should have been happening before.”

Later this month, council is expected to debate a motion to reduce the Toronto police budget by 10 per cent, brought forward by Couns. Josh Matlow and Kristyn Wong-Tam. The motion asks that when the police make next year’s budget request, it should include a reduction of $122 million in spending from the current $1.22-billion total.

In a Wednesday tweet, Matlow warned that Tory would say “a lot of things today about policing” in response to the report. “Anything other than supporting a ‘minimum’ of reinvesting 10% of the police budget, the largest single line item in Toronto’s entire budget, towards community supports and alternatives to policing, isn’t good enough,” Matlow wrote.

New human rights training The report also recommends the creation of a new training course on ethics, inclusivity and human rights, to be taught every two years, and developed with the help of the city’s Confronting AntiBlack Racism (CABR) unit.

Anthony Morgan, a racial-justice lawyer and manager of the CABR unit, said training is an important step forward, but Black communities are asking for “serious systemic change.

“Training is not transformative,” he said.

Morgan points out that, as part of the Toronto Action Plan to confront anti-Black racism, the Toronto police board signed on to fulfil certain recommendations, including “investing in alternative models that create better safety alternatives for Black Torontonians.” While there have been some “moves in the right direction,” a lot more needs to be done, he said.

Permanent advisory boards on anti-racism, mental health and addictions The report recommends making permanent two specialized committees composed of community members: one advisory panel on mental health and addictions, and one on anti-racism.

The anti-racism advisory panel was created in 2018, in response to a recommendation from Andrew Loku coroner’s inquest. The advisory panel includes members of the community with lived experience and expertise in anti-racism and mental health and addictions.

“Given the complex and significant issues that must be addressed on a constant basis insofar as anti-racism work in policing goes, having an expert body to regularly advise the board is vital,” reads the report.

Massaquoi, the co-chair of the anti-racism advisory panel, said the panel was not given any advance warning that its mandate could be expanded. So far, the panel’s biggest win has been establishing a policy on the collection of race-based statistics, but she said she has not seen it become fully implemented.

“We have not seen the will and the effort,” Massaquoi said. The report recommended that the mental health and addiction panel equally be made permanent, saying the advisory body “provides perspective and recommendations” about mental-health issues in the policing context.

Chambers, the co-chair of the board’s mental health and addiction panel, said that while alternatives are being explored, police will be interacting with people in crisis “for the foreseeable future.

“Members of the Toronto Police Service resolve hundreds of crisis calls peacefully every week. At times during this pandemic, they have been the only people who would attend a person in crisis. So the need for ongoing training, supervision and support of de-escalation skills and unbiased judgment calls is going to continue,” she said.

The board is scheduled to discuss the recommendations Friday at 9 a.m. and can be watched live.