SALUTING ‘THOUGHT LEADER’
Love-in and tribute for retired deputy police chief Peter Sloly tinged with sense of betrayal by police board.
Wasn’t about to miss the African and Caribbean community love-in and tribute for retired deputy police chief Peter Sloly Thursday night. Not after all the body blows he’s taken for the black community; not after the chief’s job was stolen from him last year; not after the middlefinger farewell salute the police union gave him on the cover of the March edition of the police association’s newsletter.
It’s good to be respected at work. It’s better to be loved at home. It’s otherworldly to be revered and embraced and respected and loved by one’s community.
Genuine, authentic affection is what the 49-year-old Sloly experienced at the function sponsored by several community organizations and held at the Jamaican Canadian Association. The hundreds of attendees laughed and cried and reminisced and pledged to pursue the values and vision Sloly espoused during 27 years in the Toronto Police Service.
The sentiment was: “We love you, Peter. We love you because you first loved us. Even when your job exposed you daily to the worse in us and the worst of us, you loved us still. And we won’t forget that.”
The vibe, the emotion, the warmth bubbled over into a communal expression of thanks for a guy who, the higher he rose in the police service, the further back he looked to elevate the community.
There’s an abiding sadness bordering on mass depression over the behind-the-scenes subversion of Sloly’s bid for the Toronto police chief’s job. Subsequently, he was sidelined, effectively demoted, moved out of his office, isolated and, finally, “retired” to salvage his dignity. This reality pushed several speakers to the edge as they voiced tribute after tribute, often barely restraining the rage and sense of betrayal.
Valarie Steele, of the Jamaican Diaspora Canada and Black Action Defence Committee, was laser-like:
“You think ‘La Grande’ and the Toronto Police Services is entombed in ‘Le Petit’ in their thinking as they prefer crawling away from progress. You have outgrown them, you can out-think them and your forward thinking is totally unacceptable to them, so they colluded to sabotage you. Fools. Like Judas who sold Jesus for 20 pieces of silver, they will eventually regret their behaviour.”
Retired deputy chief Keith Forde, the first black citizen to reach that position, struggled to contain his comments to Sloly’s achievements and impact — which he considers transformational in diversity, training, technological advancement, innovation, creativity and out-ofthe box thinking that made many of his peers insecure and uneasy.
As the lone black man in the police senior command, his was a lonely existence, Forde said. Sloly’s arrival “emboldened” him. They could now push for reforms needed to colour the force to reflect the community, and change attitudes rooted in some officers — attitudes that aggravated police-community relations.
Earlier, Sloly, Forde and two other senior officers (Dave McLeod and Carl Davis) had gone to then-chief Julian Fantino to refute Fantino’s public stance that “racial profiling” didn’t exist among Toronto police officers. Fantino stiffened. Other black officers recoiled, fearing they would risk their careers.
By the time they were both deputies, under Bill Blair, the force made huge advances in diversifying each graduating class. Sloly, against advice, took on the challenge of ending carding, the toxic practice of randomly stopping people not suspected of crimes and recording their personal information in a data bank.
That effort more than anything made Sloly a marked man and a target of the police union. Several police sources have told the Star that stopping Sloly’s bid to become chief was a union imperative. And when Sloly left last month, the union’s March newsletter carried a cartoon of him, gun blazing, his own feet shot off.
Forde looked straight at the officers in the room and wondered when they would speak out against such disrespect. If the union feels it can slap down, with impunity, a black officer who speaks truth to power, then their fate will be similar to Sloly’s.
“What should be your response? Silence cannot be the answer,” Forde said. Then he told Sloly, “Thanks for doing what is right and what is just.”
The thirst for justice runs deep in Sloly’s family. His brother, David, recounted the generations before Peter who advocated for the poor and dispossessed in Jamaica. One uncle provided free legal help before legal aid was available; a grand uncle, Roger Mais, was a journalist, author and a torchbearer in Jamaica’s independence movement. He described the British colonials as “exploitive” and “enslaving.” He was charged with sedition and jailed six months for his work in the 1940s — often directed at recasting Jamaica’s emancipators as heroes, not rebels.
Sloly told the gathering it was a challenge “to put on your uniform once a day and never able to take off your skin; to keep your values and your faith when you are confronted by things that test your values and your faith.”
“Some say I was too smart, too educated, too confident — and I don’t know if I was any of those things — but you are damn right I tried to be all of those things. They are the examples of Jamaican heroes; they are the expectations of immigrants; they are the standards set for my children.”
As he’s hit a “fork in the road,” Sloly says he won’t pursue any job that doesn’t allow him to “stay true to my values and community, to be a thought leader willing to challenge the status quo; a courageous leader willing to speak truth to power and a mentor to the next generation.”
That’s what the police services board rejected. It’s such a missed opportunity. Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca