‘You have to own it’
Toronto’s departing police chief on defunding, racism and more
He looked for one. But Mark Saunders says he simply couldn’t find an “easy moment” to step down — there aren’t many when you are the chief of the largest municipal police service in Canada.
And so it was that the city’s first Black chief held a surprise news conference in June to announce his resignation — eight months early, mid-pandemic and at the height of a local and international reckoning over anti-Black racism and policing.
Mounting calls to “defund” the police and protests decrying the deaths of Black and Indigenous people — including Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who died in the presence of Toronto police in May — played no part in his decision, Saunders said in a wide-ranging interview with the Star ahead of his exit Friday. There was nothing he wanted to “avoid,” and the ongoing discussions about policing “have always existed,” he said.
“There’s no one running out of the octagon, and I’ve never not had a decent fight when I needed to have it,” Saunders said, comparing himself to a mixed-martial-arts fighter. “Hard discussions are something that we’re not naive to, and we’re still going to have hard discussions.”
His departure after five years as chief and nearly 38 with the Toronto police was hastened by personal reasons, including a desire to spend more time with his family, Saunders said — the job was 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and not just in the “theoretical” way it had been when he was an officer.
When Saunders first started the job as top cop, he thought he knew what the jump from deputy chief to chief would entail. That was “completely naive,” he said.
The change was “massive.” As the face of the organization, his every word was now transcribed, and there suddenly wasn’t much to lean on, he said. “You have to own it and do your best.”
Saunders’ resignation has set off a search for his replacement by the seven-member Toronto police board. Facing calls to address racism within policing, for a nonpolice form of emergency response to mental health calls and for dramatic cuts to the police budget, the board is under pressure to find a real agent of change.
Saunders was hired to be one, too — and he’s faced fierce criticism that he fell far short. He cites the Way Forward, the Toronto police modernization plan, as one of his successes, even as the full plan “still has to manifest.”
The police budget remains above $1 billion and public trust has been stretched by deaths and high-profile cases of police brutality, including the recent conviction of off-duty Toronto Const. Michael Theriault for assaulting Black Whitby man Dafonte Miller.
“As chief, I can’t deny that this matter will have an increased strain on the relationship between police and the com
“There’s no one running out of the octagon, and I’ve never not had a decent fight when I needed to have it.”
MARK SAUNDERS OUTGOING TORONTO POLICE CHIEF
munity, specifically the Black community,” Saunders said after Theriault’s June conviction.
The Star spoke with Saunders during his final week as chief about the reckoning over policing, his personal experiences of racism — both in uniform and out — his early support for carding (the controversial police practice that disproportionately impacted Black and brown men), and what’s next.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length: In recent weeks we have been confronting anti-Black racism in society and within policing. Can you talk about your experience of discrimination on and off the job, and how you think that influenced the way you did your job as chief?
It’s about the lived experience, which obviously becomes a tool in your decision-making factors and so that was one of the unique things that I was able to bring to this office.
I’m not saying that everyone is going to deal with things the way that I’ve dealt with things, but I was always head-on. So, I mean, at the start, when I first got on (with the service), whenever any stupid comment was made, I would deal with it right there. And people would know that it was unwelcome and I had no shame in doing that because you know my parents always taught me to be proud of who I am and not to ever be ashamed. And so once you set the cadence of who you are, what you’ll tolerate and what you won’t tolerate, the word gets out. And people behave accordingly when you’re in the room and, really, that explains the dynamics of my career. There’s some things that I asked for and some things that I demanded.
When we talk about my personal life — so when I’m followed around by store security, usually around Christmas time, and I use my wife as a witness and she’s in awe to watch it happen. When I’m walking down the hall at an international conference and my friend who was white was beside me, and as we’re walking up, one of the people from the group goes: “There’s my boss from homicide.” And the other person reaches out their hand to my white friend. Awkward moment for them and I make it very slow to pull my hand out of my pocket to shake their hand and look them in the eye and watch the shades of purple and red exist.
Or being asked for ID when I’m coming into the building as a homicide investigator with my white partner. But again, those types of moments, I dealt with. Does (discrimination) exist? Yeah, it absolutely exists. And it’s: What do we need to do as an organization to teach people to get it right, not because they have to — ideally, you want them to get it right because it’s the right thing to do.
Does it worry you that there’s ongoing discrimination within the police service — whether that’s anti-Black racism or sexism or sexual harassment? In the case of Const. Heather McWilliam, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal recently ruled that she was sexually harassed for years by her supervisors and that sexual comments are commonplace within the Toronto police service. Do you feel that the service is doing enough to combat this?
I think the answer is, “yes, we’re moving in the right direction.” Listen, racism is in the world, so for me to say that the police are going to be excluded would be naive on my part, and I’ve publicly said that it does exist. What I like about this organization is the fact that we’re leaning into it now and it’s not just a matter of “OK, well, we’ve got the right procedures. We’ve got the right governance, we’ve got the right policy.” We have to get into the cultural aspects of things.
And you hear, over and over again, (there’s a) fear of reprisal. And we’re right in the middle of changing all of that and so, we have workplace harassment issues on the go. We’ve got (external partners) that are doing the research for us to help identify what best practices are. But, you know, as a culture in law enforcement, we’re so — I want to say transactional when it comes to any type of investigation. And so, when someone comes in, in my opinion, and wants to complain about any type of harassment, what we do is we default right away to investigating for misconduct, or good conduct.
What we’re not doing is we’re not listening to the person that’s coming in. And that person is coming in because they don’t feel comfortable or they feel pain. And so instead of looking at the transactional — “what needs to be done?’ — we need to create a system where it can be a matter of: “I’ve been heard, my bosses recognize it, and it gets resolved relatively quickly.”
Within days of taking over as chief in 2015, you expressed support for intelligence-based carding, calling it “very important” in the context of gathering information to eliminate Toronto’s street gang culture. Have your views changed in that time?
I was very clear that if carding was defined as random stopping and gathering of information, that is unlawful policing and I never, ever subscribed to that. And when we move to the fast forward, that is exactly how it was defined by Justice Michael Tulloch (the Ontario Court of Appeal judge who conducted a provincial review of carding, also known as street checks).
When I said intelligence-led, that means an officer knows why that person has been stopped and knows what the lawful authorities are to have that conversation. It’s different.
I’ll tell you where (carding) had an effect on street-gang activity working in homicide. You have a victim that is dead, and you show up to the scene and you find out who that person is. First off, you get a witness account of what happened, and they’d say: “This person was standing here with two other people, then all of a sudden a group of three people came, fired shots, the other two took off” — and that is very common in this city. And so when we start doing a deeper dive on that person that’s laying on the asphalt, and you see that this person was with two other people over here on one day, and then over here on one day, and then in a car on another day, the starting point for an investigation would be different. We would know right away who those two other people likely were ... And so, it enhanced a storyline.
Where it was wrong was when it was used as a measuring tool for performance, and when people thought that more was better. And, you know, if (police patrol) Car A got10 and Car B got 20, that represented Car B was working harder. This was where it got not good. This is where we started to lose our legitimacy. And so, as an organization, we’ve done a lot of things by putting in the (the Police and Community Engagement Review), having the PACER advisory committee work with us, look at our training with a racialized lens, look at our procedures with a racialized lens.
On the go-forward, you’ve seen that we have switched over to a much more intelligence-led entity. There are far fewer complaints in the community as a whole. There’s still a lot more work to be done. It really does speak to: We need to get it right, because if we lose public trust then we’ve lost everything.
Should Toronto police apologize for carding that saw people who weren’t suspected of a crime stopped, questioned and documented?
I thought that I had done that, and that it was “OK, now how do we move forward?” And the most important thing is creating relationships and most of our crimes are solved with community, not without community. Right now we’re in a space where, again, we’ve got to figure out how we can get back to the table and figure things out. At the press conference where you announced you were resigning, you said you wanted to help find a “cure” for the disease that sees “young Black boys getting killed by young Black boys.” How will you be able to help them outside of the office of the chief?
I leave the seat but I keep my wisdom. After you do a multitude of street-gang homicides where you’re looking at both ends of the spectrum — A, from the victim’s and B, from the accused — a lot of things are learned. I’ve been able to be put into spaces that most people would never, ever be able to see. So it’s about using the right resources and the right people. It’s not necessarily a dollarsand-cents issue. I think there are certain formulas that can address at-risk and high-risk — I’m looking forward to the high-risk end because I think the resources and programs in that field are next to nothing.
There are mounting calls for police to be “defunded.” You’ve said that isn’t feasible with the level of gun violence. But at what point is the city simply spending too much on policing?
If people read The Way Forward, the modernization plan, we speak to the importance of enhancing partnerships to create community safety and so we readily admit that if others step up to the plate with a sustainable plan and system, then that means that there is less for us to do, more for us to focus on what we really are trained to do, with the equipment that we wear and the comprehensive training and understanding of law.
But right now, at two o’clock in the morning — we’re it. Once the right thing is built, let’s have a discussion. But you know you can’t put the cart in front of the horse. It has to be thoughtful, it has to be tested and it has to have successful outcomes. And so, our knowledge we’ll impart on whichever community entity may take it, because the talk is we want to create an arm’s-length entity to do those two o’clock knocks. And we’re not concerned about it being done by someone else. In fact, we’ll embrace it. But you gotta deliver it first.