The Star’s view: Toronto should be a leader, not a laggard,
Until just a few weeks ago, the reforms to policing proposed by Toronto Mayor John Tory would have been welcomed as a major step forward.
But we’re in a different world now. From the massive protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, to outrage over the deaths of far too many people in mental distress at the hands of police, the demand for change is loud and growing.
In this context the reforms that Toronto city council will consider on Monday should now be seen as only a starting point for change. They go in the right direction, but they are a bare minimum for what’s needed now.
Still, it won’t be easy to accomplish even the agenda that Tory has laid out for changing the structure and culture of Toronto’s police service. The forces resisting change are strong — starting with the police force itself and its $1.22-billion annual budget, the powerful police union, and the Ford government, which has already made clear it will resist meaningful reform.
The item that tops Tory’s agenda is a call to come up with a better way to respond to calls involving people in mental health crises, and that don’t involve violence or weapons.
At this point that’s a no-brainer. People calling out for help in the throes of a medical crisis need appropriate help, not armed response. Other jurisdictions are figuring out how to do this, and Toronto should be a leader, not a laggard in this area.
It could create a separate mental health response team, not led by police, or build on its existing mobile crisis response teams, which don’t have the capacity to do the job properly. Regardless, all that will cost money, and if police are no longer performing that task then it should come out of their budget.
Tory is vague on that point, only asking the city manager to calculate the “likely reductions” in the police budget that may result. At this point in the debate, though, there’s a public expectation that the budget will be heading down, not up. If police are going to be doing less, then they plainly won’t need as much money — especially given the many competing priorities the city is facing.
In fact, council will be considering an alternate proposal from councillors Josh Matlow and Kristyn Wong-Tam to cut the budget by a flat 10 per cent for next year. Tory is right that that’s an arbitrary figure; if the councillors want it to have a chance, they’ll have to be a lot more specific about what they think should be cut.
In that regard, calls to give council more information and greater control over the police budget are fully justified. Again, Tory’s proposal is a bare minimum — to let council have a line-by-line breakdown of the police budget. When more than a billion dollars of public money is going to policing, it’s absurd that elected representatives are left in the dark on exactly how it’s being spent.
At the same time, public trust requires much more transparency in investigations of police misconduct. At the moment, the provincial Special Investigations Unit is slow and frustratingly opaque. It needs to work faster and share much more information with the public, especially in high-profile cases like the recent police-involved deaths of Regis KorchinskiPaquet in Toronto and Ejaz Choudry in Mississauga.
With both the SIU and police budgeting, however, it’s up to the province to act. And unfortunately, Premier Doug Ford so far is showing he isn’t open to serious police reform. He should think again.
It will be an uphill battle for true change to policing, but Toronto does have one big advantage. With Mark Saunders’ decision to step down as chief at the end of July, it has an opportunity to choose a new leader committed to a strong reform agenda.
It will then be up to council and the police services board to stick with that agenda, despite the resistance that is bound to come.