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Crime reporter Wendy Gillis looks at Bill Blair’s rise to the top: his critics, backers, battles and a legacy that’s very much up for debate
Blair’s rise, fall and clashes in between
The Rise
In some respects, Bill Blair owes a great deal to being far too big for the standard-issue police car.
In 1976, the aspiring lawyer took a break from studies at the University of Toronto to follow in the footsteps of his father, lifelong cop John Blair. At police college, young Blair (six-footfive) met fellow giant Kim Derry (six-foot-four) at the very back of the marching line; after graduation, the men were assigned to the same platoon in downtown’s 51 Division.
The pair walked the beat down Queen St. E. and Parliament, in part because neither could get into the 1970s-era Ford Fairmont squad cars without their legs knocking the stick shift into neutral, Derry said.
“I said to the sergeant, ‘Look. You’re looking to start a foot patrol in Regent Park,’ ” said Derry, a now retired cop who was one of Blair’s deputy chiefs. “I said Bill and I would volunteer to work in the park.”
Shifts in the high-crime housing development were formative for Blair, demonstrating an alternative to no-nonsense, aggressive law enforcement: community-based policing. Initial interactions with the Regent Park residents were acrimonious but relationships eventually formed. “The police are in the park” became “Bill and Kim are in the park,” Derry said.
Blair moved on to other roles, including an undercover drug gig, but in the mid-90s, he returned to 51 Division, by then notorious for its poisonous atmosphere and deep, mutual distrust between police and residents.
Just months after his arrival, a race riot raged, and police in the division staged a wildcat strike. Demonstrating leadership that made politicians and higher-ups in the force take notice, Blair took steps to regain trust and ease tensions, including listening to the community and telling officers to leave their cruisers and get out onto the street.
“He immediately was able to reach out into the community, get leaders from the most disenfranchised areas of the community and begin to build a bridge between 51 Division and particularly Regent Park,” said Councillor Pam McConnell, who has represented the area for more than 20 years.
The Progress
Overwhelmingly white and male. Such was the police force Blair joined in 1976, and what it was for years to come. There was definitely no such thing as a diversity and inclusion unit.
Today, nearly one quarter of the officers are visible minorities, thanks in part to an emphasis on diversity in hiring practices during Blair’s tenure. As chief, Blair appointed the force’s first black deputy chief, Keith Forde.
Forde says Blair had been supporting visible minority officers throughout his career. As both men worked their way up through the service, Forde always went to Blair with the complaints he was hearing from fellow officers of colour.
“Any issue to do with racism . . . Blair was the person I called. And he always did something,” said Forde, now retired. “I think he had a larger picture and saw the service more globally than a lot of people.”
In June 2005, Blair was the first Toronto police chief to march in the city’s Pride Parade, a gesture that brought the force closer to the city’s LGBT community. For Rev. Brent Hawkes, an openly gay pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, it was a monumental step.
“With the police, you generally don’t make a big leap forward, it’s a slow process, but you’re in it for the long haul, and so symbolic things along the ways are crucially important.”
The Fall
An approval rating of 88 per cent, a drop in crime, a contract extension for a second term. The first years of Blair’s tenure were about as good as a chief can expect.
But his sterling reputation crumbled during the 2010 G20 summit. Responding to horror stories about mass detentions, hundreds “kettled” outside during a torrential downpour and brutality at the hands of masked officers was a chief many believed was digging in his heels when he should have been apologizing. A growing chorus called for his resignation.
It took two probes by the Special Investigations Unit, the police watchdog, witness video and a provocative front-page headline from this paper — “What now, Chief Blair?” alongside a photo of an officer beating a protester named Adam Nobody — to prompt criminal charges against an officer, later identified as Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani, who was found guilty in 2013. Along the way, Blair was troublingly difficult with the SIU, said former director Ian Scott.
“It made me realize that he doesn’t really accept in any kind of wholehearted way the concept of the SIU doing independent investigations,” Scott said. “He doesn’t seem to understand or respect the importance of civilian oversight in a democratic society.”
But while Blair — who did not speak to the Star for this story — bore the brunt of the criticism, there were factors beyond his control, including that Toronto police were woefully unprepared after getting only six months’ notice the summit would be in town.
“I don’t think any chief, where there’s been a G20, has not been criticized. It’s a no-win situation,” said former deputy chief Tony Warr, a high-ranking officer during the demonstrations who was also subject to scathing criticism for his role.
“While I’d like to blame him for so much of what went on, I tend to feel he’s more of a small cog in a machine,” said Byron Sonne, who was found not guilty of plotting to bomb the G20 summit, but lost his marriage, home and job while in jail.
“There are much bigger targets that left him flapping in the wind.”
The Clashes
Police chiefs aren’t here to make friends, nor can they count on keeping the ones they had. Relationships have a way of straining when, say, the mayor becomes the subject of a scandalous criminal investigation.
Before police recovered the notorious crack video allegedly starring Rob Ford, the former mayor and his brother, then-city councillor Doug Ford, praised Blair, and even came to his defence after the G20.
Their support shifted when Blair told reporters in October 2013 he was “disappointed” as a citizen after viewing the video. An incensed Doug Ford called for Blair to step down and filed a complaint to the police review director, saying the comment showed Blair was biased against Ford.
Messiness ensued. Mayor Ford was filmed at a late-night diner, bragging about how he evaded police surveillance (“F---ing Chief Blair,” he can be heard saying). Months later, Doug Ford accused Blair of leaking information involving Rob Ford to the Star, prompting Blair to serve Doug with a notice of defamation (Blair dropped the suit after Doug apologized).
“There was a lot of emotions running on all fronts at that point,” Doug Ford said this week. “We’re past that point, we’re looking at the future, and what happened, happened. I wish Bill Blair all the best in his new endeavour.”
Contrition isn’t coming from Councillor Michael Thompson, former vice-chair of the Toronto Police Services Board and once among Blair’s backers. Thompson says he began to see a different side of Blair as the board discussed ways to trim the ballooning police budget, now past $1 billion. Thompson says Blair showed an unwillingness to budge, suggesting he saw civilian oversight as an intrusion.
The chief today is not the man chosen for the job, the councillor says; he has become more about “pacifying with language and less about actually doing something.”
“The metamorphosis this man went through in the last 10 years has been absolutely frightening.”
The Violence
The homicide toll climbed to 80 deaths in 2005 — the highest since 1991 — and the massive spike in fatal shootings meant Blair’s first year on the job had a grave moniker: the Year of the Gun.
Blair’s response was swift and included a provincially funded, anti-violence strategy targeting gun and gang activity, though the initiative has been also highlighted in criticisms of “carding.” The success of the crackdown on gun violence is evident today, says homicide unit Staff Insp. Greg McLane: homicides now hover around 60 annually, and last year the percentage of deaths caused by guns showed a nearly 20 per cent drop since 2005.
Spikes in gun violence have persisted, including two deadly shootings that rocked the city in 2012. First, gunfire in the Eaton Centre food court, killing two. Then, six weeks later, the mass shooting at a block party on Danzig St. that left two dead and 22 injured — gun violence Blair called “unprecedented.”
McLane notes many factors affect crime rates, but the overall decline is impressive considering guns have never been so accessible in the city. “I think that he’s faced more challenges that way than any other chief,” he said.
Blair also faced intense criticism over deaths at the hands of his officers. During his tenure, 23 people died in shooting incidents involving Toronto police. A growing number of deaths involving mentally ill or emotionally disturbed persons prompted outraged calls for changes to the service’s use of force.
The high-profile shooting death of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim by Toronto Const. James Forcillo prompted Blair to commission an independent report on interactions with people in crisis, resulting in 84 recommendations aimed at eliminating fatal encounters with police.
The Final Conflict
Blair famously acknowledged racial profiling existed in the Toronto police force. But whether he did everything he could to eliminate it has now, in the final stretch of his tenure, come into question.
Carding, the Toronto police practice of stopping, questioning and documenting citizens, is considered by many as racial profiling by another name. A series of Star investigations found young brown and black men are disproportionately carded, leaving them feeling harassed and targeted.
When the Toronto Police Services Board last April made sweeping changes to the practice, it was hailed as a sizeable step toward improving police-community relations.
But months went by, and Blair had not implemented the changes the police board requested. The loggerheads eventually required a retired judge to moderate and brought criticisms Blair was not acting on the board’s directions. On Thursday, to shouts of “Shame!” from the gallery, the board passed a revised policy that many felt lacked the civilian safeguards that were contained in the original guidelines written by the board. “I would have loved to see his tenure completed by first thing, getting rid of carding,” said Forde, Blair’s former deputy chief.