Top cop in Peel tears into chairman
‘You took no steps to stop tirade,’ chief says after community group ripped her force at public meeting
‘The content is false, inflammatory and disrespectful to the Office of the Chief of Police and the members of the Peel Regional Police.’
Peel police Chief Jennifer Evans has lashed out at the man in charge of the board that oversees her, a day after she was publicly berated by an anti-discrimination group for allegedly failing to deal with equity and diversity concerns and rampant misconduct by Peel officers.
The Star obtained a scathing letter Evans sent Wednesday to board chair Amrik Ahluwalia.
“You took no steps to stop a disrespectful tirade in a public setting and in the presence of senior members of the police service,” Evans stated in her letter.
A day earlier, at the board’s meeting, a delegation by the Peel Coalition Against Racialized Discrimination (P-CARD) hammered Evans, saying she has “failed” the community on issues such as carding and the force’s poor representation of visible minorities, accusing the chief of doing little to confront concerns of “nepotism and cronyism” raised by her own officers.
The Star has learned that Evans has threatened to pull herself and her senior officers out of an upcoming police board workshop because of its resolution Tuesday to bring in an independent auditor to probe the force’s hiring and promotions practices, along with its overall equity performance.
“I know she is kind of emotional at this time,” Ahluwalia said Thursday, confirming Evans’ threat to pull herself and her senior team from the workshop because of Tuesday’s decision to conduct the audit. “We are reviewing what course of action to take.”
Sources, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, told the Star that Evans circulated her letter to Ahluwalia within the force.
Ahluwalia, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie and Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey, who sit on the board, were asked if they would respond in any way to Evans’ decision to write and circulate the letter, and to pull out of the workshop.
“In light of Chief Evans’ correspondence to chair Ahluwalia I will be requesting that chair Ahluwalia convene a special meeting of the board,” Jeffrey said. Ahluwalia said he has already called an emergency meeting.
Evans made it clear in her letter that she does not want the audit, but did not respond to a request by the Star to explain why. She did not respond to other questions from the Star.
“It is a serious concern that the Police Services Board immediately agreed to make a resolution based on these unfounded allegations,” Evans stated in her letter, describing PCARD’s comments during its deputation at the board meeting as “defamatory and presented with the intent to discredit my reputation.”
Crombie said she was “surprised by Chief Evans’ reaction to the call for an audit.”
“Audits are common within any organization and it is my understanding that such an audit has not been conducted in many years. It is our job as Peel Police Services Board members to ask the difficult questions and ensure that the police service is meeting the needs of residents,” the mayor said.
Jeffrey agreed. “I ran on a platform of accountability and transparency and I welcome a third party evaluating the effectiveness of Peel Regional Police policies and procedures,” she said. P-CARD chair Ranjit Khatkur, who made the presentation Tuesday, denied Evans’ claim that it was defamatory.
She said it was a response to the chief’s earlier remarks to a deputation the group made last year.
“There is nothing defamatory in the P-CARD report,” she said.
Khatkur said the deputation was a response to “claims” by Evans that equity and diversity were being effectively dealt with. “Our racialized officers and community have a very different view of all these token efforts. Furthermore, why did the chief ignore so many of the questions in our initial correspondence with her, which we provided after the board asked us to send the chief all our questions and concerns?”
Khatkur said if Evans has been doing an exemplary job on equity issues, “she should be thrilled to have an external equity audit.”
She said Evans’ resistance to an external equity audit, just like her refusal last year to suspend carding after the board requested her to do so, “should be alarming to the richly diverse community that call Peel home. Whose police chief is she, if not ours?”