High-ranking officer faces penalty hearing
Woman has admitted to supplying questions in advance to candidates vying for rank of sergeant
Inexcusable police misconduct from a high-ranking officer, or an ill-fated attempt to diversify Toronto’s ranks?
The motivations of Toronto police Supt. Stacy Clarke could take centre stage Monday, as the high-profile and long-delayed penalty hearing begins for the pioneering senior officer entangled in a promotional cheating scandal that rocked the force in 2022.
Clarke, who in 2020 became Toronto’s first Black female superintendent, has already admitted she helped half a dozen officers cheat during a promotional process, supplying confidential interview questions to candidates vying for the rank of sergeant.
Last fall, Clarke made a surprise guilty plea to seven counts of professional misconduct under Ontario’s police legislation, an admission that could result in a penalty ranging from a reprimand to demotion to dismissal.
The six officers she helped cheat had been her mentees — and fellow racialized cops.
Why a celebrated officer swiftly ascending the ranks would risk her career to help others cheat is yet to be aired in the disciplinary proceedings. Sentencing submissions are scheduled for an unusually long stretch of five days, suggesting Clarke’s reasons — and the broader context of her misconduct — could be laid bare.
Her lawyer, Joseph Markson, declined to comment in advance of the sentencing hearing.
The case has attracted controversy and widely diverging opinions. Since Clarke was charged under the Police Services Act in January 2022, supporters who believe she is being wrongly targeted for attempting to address equity problems in the force have logged on in droves to watch the proceedings online, and filled the disciplinary hearings office.
Monday will be no different, with supporters set to gather at Toronto’s Jamaican Canadian Association (JCA) before busing down to Toronto police headquarters. Anticipating a crowd, police are expected to move the hearing from the small tribunal office to the second-floor auditorium.
“The community is watching closely, and we are going to speak up,” said Herman Stewart, a former JCA president who will be in attendance. “We have been locked out for so long … and this thing is going to turn the clock back.”
Stewart believes Clarke had a “lapse in judgment” when, in the fall of 2021, she disobeyed a strict directive to cease communication with mentees in the midst of their effort to become sergeants, a promotional process in which Clarke was directly involved.
According to an agreed statement of facts read at her guilty plea, Clarke took photos of a question-and-answer used in the interviews and texted them to her protégés. With one officer, a family friend, she conducted mock interviews using actual questions from other sergeant interviews she’d sat in on as a member of the promotional panel.
All the officers Clarke helped were disciplined, ranging from docked pay to a demotion. Stewart credits Clarke for admitting what she did was wrong, but believes it was done in an effort to change what is still a “male-dominated, Old Boys club.”
“How I would look at it is, if the police service was doing a fair and equitable promotional process, there would have been more minorities in senior positions,” he said. “There would be no need for her to do what she did.”
Many rank-and-file officers, alongside the Toronto Police Association, are meanwhile scrutinizing the case to ensure Clarke faces consequences for her actions. In early 2021, the cheating scandal prompted the force to temporarily freeze all promotional processes while her misconduct, and those of her mentees, were investigated by the professional standards unit.
The union has been vocal in its concerns that, as a senior officer, Clarke could get a softer landing than lower-level cops in hot water.
“We will be watching very closely to see if the outcome is fair and proportionate to the standard expected of a highranking senior officer,” Jon Reid, president of the Toronto Police Association, told the Star last fall.
Clarke, considered by many as a future contender for Toronto’s top cop, has previously been direct about her goals to help others rise through the ranks. In an interview on the police podcast “24 Shades of Blue,” Clarke said she felt the “responsibility to lift as I am climbing.”
“There is a true ownership of that position that I continue to pave the way for others, so they can see themselves within our organization and ranks,” she said. Despite increasing focus on gender and racial diversity within police ranks, services across Canada and beyond remain white and male-dominant workplaces, particularly at higher ranks. Though the proportion of women and racialized officers is rising, it’s slowgoing, says Lesley Bikos, a police culture researcher and associate professor at King’s University College.
“White, cisgender, heterosexual men continue to dominate senior leadership roles, giving them the most access to status and institutional power,” Bikos writes in a 2022 research paper examining diversification efforts in Canadian police services.
In an interview, Bikos — a former police officer — said Clarke’s case could spur a “nuanced conversation” about systemic racism in policing “and the many ways it shows up culturally, structurally, operationally.”
She also wondered whether Clarke, as a Black woman, could be facing more severe consequences for her actions than white male officers who have engaged in similar or worse misconduct, such as committing criminal offences.
“It’s worth asking the question: ‘Is this more evidence of how the intersection of systemic racism and sexism shows up within policing?’”
The hearing is scheduled to begin Monday morning.