We all need to ask ourselves, Why don’t we have better option?’ Our system is broken when our only option is to send the police into a mental health crisis situation.
Uppala Chandrasekera, Toronto police board member, on the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Toronto police headquarters in a call for systemic change Friday as the police board agreed to hold a town hall meeting early next month to discuss the growing pressure.
As they gathered for a sit-in on College Street, protesters wrote in giant pink lettering spanning the street: “Defund the Police.”
Among a set of demands released Friday, the organization Black Lives Matter Toronto called for a redirection of at least 50 per cent of the Toronto police budget to social programming including long-term housing for street-involved communities, food security programs, transit, libraries and community-led anti-violence programs.
“Today TPS and the mayor are getting up in front of the media to tell us that they are responding to our calls by doing more of the same,” the group wrote on Twitter Friday.
“We demand better. We demand our lives.”
Earlier, the Toronto police board held a virtual meeting — its first since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the falling death of Toronto woman Regis Korchinski-Paquet prompted a mounting outcry over the deaths of Black and Indigenous people in interactions with officers — that acknowledged the outrage.
“The board acknowledges the last three weeks have been particularly difficult for residents of Toronto and the global community, as it relates to policecommunity relations,” board chair Jim Hart said as the meeting began.
“We are listening and commit to creating the appropriate venue to hear from residents on these matters and more.”
Hart said the board had received “thousands” of messages in recent weeks and is quickly arranging for a town hall the week of July 6. Based on that input, the board will move forward with recommendations on police accountability, reform and community safety priorities, Hart said.
The police board had originally been set to discuss a report prepared by Hart, which made a series of recommendations including new anti-racism training for officers and the expansion of the service’s mental health crisis teams. But that discussion was postponed after the report was criticized as offering “baby steps” in response to mounting calls for systemic change.
Those calls for an overhaul of policing were apparent as hundreds of protesters blocked downtown Toronto’s College Street outside police headquarters, some writing, in giant pink lettering spanning the street: “Defund the Police.”
During the board meeting, Hart acknowledged the “considerable” public outcry over the Toronto police budget, saying the issue is about more than just dollars but is a “philosophical community discussion about where we focus our funding as a society.”
This month, city council is expected to debate a motion to reduce the Toronto police budget by 10 per cent, a reduction that would see $122 million in spending redirected from the force’s current $1.22-billion total.
Mayor John Tory, who sits on the Toronto police board, said the upcoming city council meeting will see an “extensive series of measures” regarding policing. He told the board the last few weeks have seen a broad consensus that there needs to be “thoughtful, sensible” reform.
“I’m absolutely committed in being a leader in that process of undertaking those reforms. I think we have to do it carefully, we have to do it sensibly, we have to do it thoughtfully,” he said.
Uppala Chandrasekera, a police board member, called the deaths of Black and Indigenous people in the United States and Canada “devastating and unacceptable.”
“There is so much pain across so many communities in our city right now, because we have all been here before,” she said.
Chandrasekera specifically expressed condolences to the family of Korchinski-Paquet, the 29-year-old Afro-Indigenous woman who fell to her death in the presence of Toronto police last month. The woman’s 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.
“That is a tragedy and it’s unacceptable. We all need to ask ourselves, ‘Why don’t we have a better option?’ Our system is broken when our only option is to send the police into a mental health crisis situation,” Chandrasekera said.