What a difference
a year and a book make! In December 2020, my
interest in police was sparked by the
George Floyd killing in the US and the
international Black protests against
racism under the banner Defund the Police. But
I still felt that the police
played some useful roles. I have changed. First, “Rethinking
Community Safety” came out in January
2021. It was a substantial joint report
by almost two dozen community and rights
organizations in Toronto. They included
Toronto Neighbourhood Centers, Black Lives
Matter, OCASI (Ontario Council of
Agencies Serving Immigrants), and the Canadian
Civil Liberties Association. The
evidence in Rethinking Community Safety
showed there were better ways of
dealing with mental health, homelessness and
youth issues than relying on the
police. The City of Toronto’s pilot project
seemed timid. Then in September
2021 a book came out that shocked me and let
me see a bigger truth. It reported
that a US community disbanded their police
force, started a new public safety
body and as a result cut both crime and
racism. Wow. The book was Crisis in
Canada’s Policing: Why change is so hard,
and how we can get REAL REFORM in our
police forces, by John Sewell, with
Christopher J. Williams, Lorimer, 2021.
The evidence in favour of deep reform of
police is overwhelming. The challenge
is to generate the political momentum to go
that far. John Sewell was
mayor of Toronto in 1978. Eight people died in
13 months by police guns. Half
were mentally ill; the others were Blacks and
immigrants. Sewell spoke out
calling for police policy changes to stop
this. He was narrowly defeated in his
re-election bid in 1980. However, Cardinal
Carter was asked to report on police
and community relations. The Cardinal produced
a damning report on police and racism.
That led to a public complaints commission.
And Sewell? He began teaching at
York University on policing in Canada. In 1985
he published a book Police:
Urban Policing in Canada. At the turn of
the century, Sewell established the
community group “Toronto Police Accountability
Coalition”, TPAC. Twenty years of seeking
reforms of Police at the Toronto’s Police
Service Board taught Sewell that the
Toronto Police Service is like the services in
other major cities in Canada. It
is unbelievably hard to change policing. The
2021 book shares his experience but
uses statistics and quotes from reports and
judgments. He cites reports on the RCMP
by respected judges, the Brown Task Force 2007
and retired Supreme Court justice
Bastarache in 2020. They found that things in
the RCMP were so bad that starting
again would be a good option. Sewell’s book is
not a thriller. But it is evidence-full,
if a bit repetitive on needed reforms.
Nonetheless it got me to read it and to
change. Let me take you
through a bit more of the detail. The first
chapter shows why changing police behaviour
has been difficult: a deeply entrenched
culture; solidarity among officers; inability
to cooperate with other organizations.
Management is weak and reluctant to
discipline officers. Police associations and
police unions represent members in
bargaining, provide representation for
complaints and play a big public and political
role enforcing police culture. The civilian
authority is generally so timid that
complaint bodies were added. But these are not
effective either. The second chapter
questions “What do police do?”. In the last 20
years crime has fallen in Canada.
Property crime has fallen the most. Violent
crime accounts for 1/6 of the crimes
police report. Crime is not spread evenly over
Canada and a large number of
police in a city does not correlate with low
crime there. In 2018 there were 68,600
police in
Canada and 643,000 individuals
were charged, so each officer resulted in 10
charges in the year. Police receive
calls for service - disorder, alarms,
homeless, illnesses - and respond to about
half. Most
are resolved without
violence. In 2018 the average officer
responded to 100 calls - less than 1 call
per shift. There are almost no studies of what
an officer does with the rest of
the time. There is police patrolling. There
was a Kansas City study in the 1970s
showing that the extent of police patrolling
did not affect crime rates, arrest
rates. Moreover, the police presence was not
reassuring to citizens. Police don’t
prevent crime. Serious crime is dominated by
disputes between friends, family
members and business acquaintances.
Identifying suspects is done by detectives
who are ~15% of an urban police force. Suspects
are
suggested by someone present at the scene of
the crime. Without help identifying
suspects detectives cannot lay charges.
Charges are laid in 2/3 of serious
crime cases, but in less than 10% of property
loss cases. Many things other
than police reduce crime. Better car locking
systems cut auto theft by 80% in the
past few decades, and insurance company
standards for home safety cut the numbers
of break-ins. Safe injection sites reduced
crime associated with drugs. Such alternatives
to police are often cost effective. Lots of
groups add to safety and security: school
teachers; transit drivers; rape crisis
centres. Organizations support rights to
free speech and assembly: Canadian Civil
Liberties Association; some lawyers
and judges; and some courageous elected
officials. Our security comes from many
sources: licensed cab drivers;
well-functioning community centres; school
crossing
guards. The police are in a web of
arrangements to try to make communities
comfortable
for life and work. Hiring more police can in
fact provide less security for
marginalized parts of society. The carrying of
guns by police contrasts with the small amount
of time an officer spends on violent
crime. Guns are rarely used but front-line
police carry semi-automatic pistols.
Use of guns can be lethal. There were 461
deaths in interactions with police
many from police shootings in Canada in the
period 2000-2017. Yet guns are not
used much. Generally, 2014-2018 Toronto police
officers fired guns an average
of about 17 times each year. From 2011-2016
Calgary police fired a gun on
average 4 times a year. These numbers show
guns are not needed by ordinary police
officers most of the time. An armed supervisor
or a special task force could be
used if a gun is necessary - as a number of
police forces internationally do. The third chapter
tells of systemic racism and discrimination.
To preserve a safe neighbourhood police
favoured the strategy of stopping anyone they
felt was going to act in a disorderly
fashion. This led to “carding” and “street
checks” in Canada. In 2013 journalists
reported racial profiling in police stops from
2008 to 2011. Blacks are 8.3% of
Toronto’s population but accounted for 23.4%
of cardings. The police said this was
not racism, but they introduced a modified
system of carding. In 2014 a study was
done for the Toronto Police Services Board.
The Board Chair found the report
findings disturbing. The Police accused him of
grandstanding. Mayor Tory named
a mediator and suggested alternative
recommendations. City residents attended an
April 2015 meeting to object to that. In April
Toronto Life published
Desmond Cole’s article “The Skin I’m in:
I’ve been Interrogated by Police More
than 50 Times – All Because I’m Black”.
This galvanized opposition to carding.
A group of notable Toronto citizens formed
Concerned Citizens to End Carding and
issued a powerful statement. The Provincial
Minister of Community Safety and
Correctional Services intervened saying the
province of Ontario would issue a
regulation. Some police chiefs resisted, but
the regulation came into effect
April 2016. There have been carding stories
from cities across Canada. In November 1990
Neil Stonechild was picked up downtown on a
freezing night and forced out of the
police car 8 kilometers from the Saskatoon
city centre. His frozen body was
found five days later. Police said he had
wandered. In a public enquiry 14
years later, the true story came out. The
officers were fired, but not charged.
Similar stories emerged elsewhere. In Quebec
in 1987 there were stories from 40
Indigenous women about sexual abuse and being
driven outside inhabited areas
and left in the cold. There were stories of
the Thunder Bay Police Service and its
failure to investigate suspicious deaths of
Indigenous youth attending secondary
schools there, told in Tanya Talaga’s book Seven
Fallen Feathers. Discrimination
in police killings is shown in a 2019 report
by the Ontario Human Rights
Commission on the Toronto police service.
Between 2013 and 2017 a Black person was
20 times more likely than a white to be killed
by Toronto police. Incarceration begins
with arrest by the police. Justice Canada
reported 2018-2019 about 30% of
admissions to jail were Indigenous adults, who
are 4.5% of the adult Canadian
population. There are higher ratios in Western
Canada. Finally, there is racism
within the force - see a book by an insider
about the RCMP, Black Cop: My 36
Years of Police Work and my Career-Ending
Experiences with Official Racism by
Calvin Lawrence. Chapter 4 explores
systemic sexism in police work towards women
with whom the police are dealing,
and against women in the police forces. The
police failure to investigate missing
and murdered Indigenous women and girls is
tied to police problems with racial
stereotypes.
Indigenous are 4% of the population, but they
account for 16% of female homicides
and 40% of federally incarcerated women. The
National Inquiry into missing and
murdered Indigenous women recommended new
civilian oversight bodies and a national
Indigenous police task force. “That report
makes a harrowing read” says Sewell. Police have not
dealt well with domestic violence. About 80%
of it is violence against women
and about 60 per year of those women are
murdered. Many cases of domestic
violence are believed not to be reported to
police. Two studies found about 40%
of police families experience domestic
violence compared with 10% of families
in general. Then other officers may cover up
so that the women cannot turn to the
police for assistance. If found guilty of
domestic violence “police officers
are unlikely to be fired, arrested, or
referred for prosecution”. Discrimination against
women in police forces is high. For more than
30 years there have been calls to
fix sexual harassment in the RCMP. There was a
2016 class action settlement
with women police officers of the RCMP for
discrimination, harassment and assault.
The 2020 report by retired Supreme Court
justice Bastarache found “the culture
of the RCMP is toxic and tolerates
misogynistic and homophobic attitudes among
its leaders and members”. There are problems
of fairness of promotion for women.
The 2020 report proposed changes that would
benefit all officers. Chapter 5 is about
police recruitment, training and management.
The police do not seek and hire
good managers. Managers must start at the
bottom and work their way up. Officers
are generalists. Civilian specialists are
hired, but not for police functions.
Typically,
the police seek out under-25-year-olds wanting
their first serious job. Recruitment
is deliberate. Recruits go to a formal
training program which focuses on basic
police skills. There is no training on how to
use discretion: give formal or
informal warning; lay a charge or look the
other way? The Ontario Police College
training has students living together in a
remote location for 3 months. This builds
a sense of cohesion and solidarity and teaches
them to obey orders. Those not
fitting the police culture can be weeded out.
Most forces end up dominantly
male and white. When the police need new
skills, new training is given the
basic recruit. The 2020 Bastarache report on
the RCMP is critical of recruitment
and of the inappropriateness for female
recruits. There is a lack of
specialized officers for specialized units.
The Peel force has 2000 officers on
general patrol with 400 spread over
specialized units like marine, homicide or
information technology where civilians are
hired to play a large or dominant
role. Police conduct is
governed by provincial codes. When an officer
is charged with abusing a code, a
tribunal is set up with a hearing officer and
prosecutor both usually current
or retired senior officers of the police force
involved. The officer is
represented by a lawyer provided by the force.
The tribunal decides the case
and levies a fine, often quite trivial.
Decisions of the tribunal are seldom public.
In Ontario reports of the Special
Investigations Unit are made public, but not
the names of officers. Oversight of these
kinds of bodies is lacking. The last chapter asks
what to do. The 2007 Brown report on the RCMP
found that the force is so damaged
that it should be discarded so new
arrangements for safety and security can be
made. Professor Mariana Valverde made powerful
arguments for this approach in
the Toronto Star 2020 for the RCMP
and perhaps other police forces. The 2020
Bastarache report on the RCMP found the 2007
Brown report favouring new
arrangements reasonable. To do this is
difficult. It was done in Camden, NJ. The
new arrangements were not perfect but the
improvements were significant. The challenge
is how to make such a change in a place where
there are members of the public not
directly and adversely affected by police and
unfamiliar with the issues. Less
than a global new beginning, it might be
possible for a community to choose to
have its own force rather than a branch of the
RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police or
Surete du Quebec. Sewell gives a list
of lesser changes. Shifting the approach to
crime to “redemption and support” from
“incarceration for deterrence” could help,
because deterrence doesn’t happen. For
some, the unpleasantness of prison is better
than the outside world. For them, affordable
housing, personal security, addiction
management, better mental health systems,
medical care would make a difference. (I add a
universal basic income.) Defunding requires
identifying tasks to be removed from the
police force: -
Several
cities moved first responses to mental
health calls to a dedicated team of
paramedics, mental health professionals and
peer support councilors. -
Calls
regarding homeless go to alternatives to the
police in Seattle. -
Calls
involving youth should be transferred
from police. The UK 2018 report agrees with
the 2008 Ontario report. Better
social policy leads to real solutions for
youth. This means more support in
schools, increased employment opportunities,
community policing and a review of
the approach to drugs. -
Gender-based
violence is best addressed by women’s
shelters with community services. -
Police
can be removed from most traffic stops,
replacing
them with separate traffic agencies that use
unarmed monitors to enforce
traffic laws and issue tickets for minor
matters like speeding and red-light cameras,
or failing to signal. Police could deal with
hit and runs and driving a stolen
vehicle. -
The
police might be largely removed from
investigating missing persons, as proposed by
judge Gloria Epstein, who saw
police as part of a community investigation
with social service, health and
community agencies. The effectiveness
of these preferred approaches is not in
question. The question is whether it is
politically possible to make such a large
reduction in the police budget that
such changes would require. Developing a lobby
group for change will be important.
But what is really needed is to begin again. A
new force for a new century is
already some 20 years overdue.