Blair’s legacy
Outgoing chief draws mixed reviews for 10-year reign,
Ten years ago this month, a towering cop from Scarborough stepped into one of the most contentious and demanding jobs in Toronto.
William Sterling Blair hadn’t even completed officer training when he began declaring he’d one day run the place. “His first words were that he wanted to be chief of police,” retired officer Tony Warr, one of Blair’s deputy chiefs, mused this week.
By the time he was tapped to lead the largest municipal force in the country — following stints as a longhaired undercover drug cop, the head of the nowdefunct “morality squad” and commander of a rogue division known as “the armpit of the force” — he’d earned an unlikely reputation: a tough cop’s cop and a community-minded, Jane Jacobs-reading progressive.
At 50, he was the youngest chief in the force’s history but viewed as a natural leader with an uncanny ability to see around corners.
Of course, he could never have predicted what was in store.
Police cruisers ablaze during the G20 summit. The Summer of the Gun. A bloodbath at a Scarborough barbecue. Gunfire in the Eaton Centre food court. A teenage girl killed by a stray bullet on Boxing Day. A teenage boy gunned down by a police officer in a streetcar. A billiondollar budget.
A crack video apparently starring the mayor.
When Blair was named Toronto’s ninth chief of police in April 2005, the order had been tall but simple: regain Toronto’s trust. The aggressive, lock-’em-up style of Blair’s predecessor, Julian Fantino, had bred fear and suspicion. Blair promised to get officers in uniform out into the neighbourhoods. Communities would know their officers, and officers would know them.
Most important, he acknowledged what Fantino would not: racial profiling existed in the force.
“The community is concerned about the impact of racism in our relations with them,” Blair said days after being named chief, fewer lines on his face and grey hairs on his head then. “We have to deal with that.”
In the final stretch of his tenure — his last official day is next Saturday — many are now questioning if he did.
A modern police thinker, a “master manipulator,” a missed opportunity, community builder, a disappointment — it depends who you ask.