Tory’s contact with police chief falls into grey area

Current and former Police Services Board members are split on whether Mayor John Tory acted appropriately when he expressed the Sherman family’s concerns to the Toronto police chief about the investigation into Barry and Honey Sherman’s deaths.

Sherman family members told Tory they were finding out information about the investigation in the media before hearing it from police, the mayor’s director of communications said in an email.

Tory, a member of the police board, informed Chief Mark Saunders of the family’s concerns “dispassionately” and did not make any requests to police, Don Peat said in the statement.

“It is not unusual for the mayor to talk to grieving families to offer condolences . . . he listens to their concerns and relays those concerns to the relevant city department or agency.”

The bodies of Barry and Honey Sherman were found Dec. 15 inside their home at 50 Old Colony Rd., where police continued to investigate on Thursday. The cause of death has been deemed ligature neck compression.

An investigation seeks to determine the circumstances surrounding their deaths.

Tory’s actions fall within a grey area of the Police Services Act, which governs all board members, former police services board chair Alok Mukherjee said.

What Tory did for the Sherman family “creates the impression that a prominent family has special access to policing services,” said Mukherjee, who retired from the Police Services Board in 2015 and became a visiting professor at Ryerson University’s department of criminology and office of equity, diversity and inclusion.

“Whether this is true or not does not matter. Not every family or person has the ability to get the city’s mayor to be their spokesperson on a police investigation.”

Under the act, no board member is allowed to give orders or directions to any member of the police force, or direct the chief on day-to-day operations of the force.

However, it is unclear if comments by Tory — arguably the most powerful police board member — constitute a direction, or will have influence on how police communicate during an ongoing investigation, Mukherjee said.

“It is immaterial in what language the family’s concern is conveyed,” Mukherjee said. “What might matter is how the member of the police service, presumably the chief, construes it.”

He added that even if Tory simply talks about how police are communicating information, it still could be part of their investigation.

Peat wrote in an email Thursday that the mayor believes it is part of his job to speak to grieving families and comfort them.

Tory speaks to many families following traumatic events in the city and conveys their concerns to city divisions or agencies, Peat said.

“In this case, he conveyed the concerns raised by the Sherman family dispassionately to the chief, like he would for any family, and did not make any requests of police,” he said.

Sources told the Star and other media outlets that homicide detectives were pursuing a theory that it was a murder-suicide. The family, however, has strongly rejected that scenario.

As has been reported previously, the family conducted their own forensic autopsy on the bodies of the Shermans before their burial last week and has hired Klatt Investigations to probe the couple’s deaths.

Brian Greenspan, a lawyer who has said he’s serving as a “resource person” for the family as they seek an investigation independent of Toronto police, confirmed Thursday that retired homicide sergeant Michael Davis is also part of the investigative team.

Greenspan called Davis a “very seasoned and very distinguished investigator.”

Davis runs an independent private investigation firm called Michael A. Davis Investigations. His website says he worked with Toronto Police for 32 years — over half that time on the homicide squad.

Saunders met with the Sherman family before Christmas, a Toronto police spokesperson confirmed.

Mark Pugash declined to comment about whether it was typical for the mayor to convey concerns to Toronto police on behalf of families.

Toronto councillor Shelley Carroll, also a Police Services Board member, said she was surprised when she heard Tory had shared the Sherman family’s concerns with police.

While she recognized the mayor does meet with families of alleged victims in high-profile investigations, “to then turn around and speak to police is different,” she said.

“In my ward (Don Valley East), we tell families they can reach out for support or help from us, but we make it clear there are limits on what we can do. You generally do not speak to police on behalf of the family.”

Unsurprised by the mayor’s actions was Councillor Chin Lee. Also a police board member, Lee said it is expected that elected officials act as a “conduit” between the public and police, especially when a case is high profile and there’s “speculation going on.

“He was not ordering police to do anything. He was just providing information.” With files from Alex McKeen