Police anti-violence unit, TAVIS, to be restructured

Move is toward a preventative and community-policing model

The Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), the specialized policing unit known for high rates of “carding,” may be restructured by the Toronto police board later this week — a move that has prompted tentative praise from advocates of community-based policing.

The Toronto Police Services Board plans to overhaul the provincially funded, highly trained tactical unit formed after Toronto’s 2005 Summer of the Gun, according to a source with knowledge of the proposed changes.

On Friday, it will unveil an interim report from the Transformational Task Force that was assembled earlier this year, led by board chair Andy Pringle and Chief Mark Saunders. The group has been given the tall order of modernizing the police service while cutting costs.

Among the changes expected to be announced Friday is the restructuring and possible renaming of TAVIS, according to a source. The proposal could shift the unit away from a reactionary, hard-line approach toward community policing focused on prevention.

The move is seen by some as the natural next step after the province’s announcement last fall that it would cut funding for the unit from $5 million to $2.63 million in 2015-16, with the aim of eventually eliminating the program.

“You can’t put a fresh coat of paint on a bad problem,” said Margaret Parsons of the African Canadian Legal Clinic.

The unit is known for “surge” or “strategic” policing, which deploys large groups of high-visibility officers to high-crime areas.

A provincial initiative, the unit was formed in 2006 in response to a spike in gun violence in 2005, when 67 per cent of the city’s 78 homicides were gun-related — a rate double that of the year before.

Ayear after TAVIS was put in place, the province announced more funding for an additional rapid response team, and soon the TAVIS units had seized hundreds of firearms and made thousands of arrests.

But the officers’ presence in some neighbourhoods also began to garner complaints and the unit became known for its high rate of “carding” — the police tactic of stopping and documenting members of the public not suspected of a crime.

A 2010 Star investigation found TAVIS officers stop, question and document black citizens at a higher rate than any other Toronto police unit.

In a high-profile case last year, a Toronto judge called out a TAVIS officer for taking the law “into his own hands” and administering “some street justice” after unlawfully arresting and searching a man stopped while walking home from a mosque.

The TAVIS officer had testified in that trial that the unit is responsible for self-generating work, including carding people in high-risk areas — and that he tried to fill out as many cards, known as 208s, as he could.

In another incident last year, bystander video captured aggressive tactics used by TAVIS officers who tried to block a videographer from recording the arrest of two youths in the Jane-Lawrence area.

Howard Morton, a Toronto lawyer and member of the Law Union of Ontario, said TAVIS has “caused more mistrust in those communities than any other program currently in Toronto.”

That’s created a situation where police are not able to get information from witnesses in high-crime areas because few people want to come forward, he said.

“Get rid of the concept, get rid of the name for sure, and look at some real community policing,” Morton said.

But Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack defends the kind of strategic policing TAVIS performs, saying there are times when officers need to saturate an area because of high crime.

“They are a valuable unit for what we call surge policing,” McCormack said.

“To me there is a huge value to that type of policing,” he added, pointing out that, since its creation, TAVIS has made 22,000 arrests.

On Friday, McCormack tweeted praise for the unit, saying: “Great work by TAVIS officers last night, 3 more guns seized and taken off of TO streets.”

Meaghan Gray, a spokeswoman for Toronto police, said in an email Tuesday that the Transformational Task Force has considered every area of the service and she would reserve comment until the report is tabled with the board on Friday.

But in a sit-down interview with the Star in December, Saunders said TAVIS plays an important role in community safety — and that despite the province’s funding cut, he would figure how to make TAVIS officers “still play a critical role, a positive role in the neighbourhoods.”

TAVIS was particularly important when it came to combating street gangs and the retaliation that typically comes in the wake of one gang’s activity, Saunders said.

“When we put law enforcement in place, it reduces retaliation,” Saunders said. “The officers that have to go call to call to call, we have to have officers that are in that area and their sole role is that visibility, that presence, that understanding of what street gangs are fighting against one another.” Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca.

“(TAVIS has) caused more mistrust in those communities than any other program currently in Toronto.” HOWARD MORTON TORONTO LAWYER