Greater Toronto

By William Doyle-Marshall
Visible minorities’ promotion, taser uses and bad pay nightclub owners were among hot buttons on the March agenda of the Toronto Police Services Board.
City Councillor Pam McConnell, Vice Chair of the Board disclosed that Aboriginal people, South Asian, Black and Japanese females are not successful in their bid for promotion within the service.
McConnell expressed serious concerns that officers from these communities were unable to get through the full process. “I see that we are not doing all that well on our success rate,” she told Chief Bill Blair at the meeting. “In most of these cases we are getting nobody through the process and I think that it’s not possible that people are not ready for those promotional opportunities and so therefore there must be barriers in the system, in the process,” McConnell observed.
The veteran municipal politician and board member noted results of promotional analysis suggests to her that those applicants don’t get sufficient markings to move on. Consequently, she is troubled about how they are going to accomplish the board’s goal of recruiting and retaining people and having them move through the organization. The ultimate result is to have full promotion and ranking of the organization reflective of the community.
Admitting it’s going to take some time, McConnell contended that as the service gets a bit better at realising this objective, she was really bothered about the huge difference in terms of the success of visible minority women compared to their male counterparts. “If you look at the statistical probability of somebody putting their name forward and actually getting through to the other end, there is no question on these charts that our visible minority people are not getting through in the same proportion as others,” the board vice chair concluded.
McConnell just wanted Blair to know that she was not satisfied that the TPS was moving people from one category into another. “In most cases they are stopped right at their entrance and unfortunately there are those who get through all of those hoops,” she observed. With this information before members of the board, they voted for urgent action between Blair, Deputy Chief Keith Forde and Chairman Alok Mukherjee to review plans for improving the situation.
McConnell expressed an interest in a conversation between the three senior officers to look at how they can further reduce the number of barriers that seem to exist systemically within the police service.
With respect to the use of conducted energy devices (tasers), Blair wanted to assure City of Toronto residents that the TPS is very thoughtful about how it developed its policies and procedures and training around its use. He informed the board that taser use is monitored very closely and the service’s policies, procedures, training and supervision are appropriate to the risks of this device in its use. Because of the effort that TPS has put in place Chief Blair felt incidents like the one at the British Columbia airport are less likely and have not happened in Toronto.
He said police brass recognizes that every use of force option has some risk attached to it and the people have a right to ask questions about how the device is being deployed. For this reason officers are required to submit a report, for every use of that device, even to the point of merely displaying it. So if they simply take it out and say to the person ‘calm down, slow down, don’t fight’ and they show them the device, we require them to report on that,” Blair said.
“So I would like the people of Toronto to be reassured that their police force is using the device properly and in the hands of a properly directed, properly trained, properly supervised officer who is fully accountable for its use. In the hands of such an officer those devices can and do save lives every day,” Chief Blair emphasized.
The board approved a recommendation by Councillor Adam Vaughan to prevent nightclub owners from not paying their security bills for services by paid duty officers. Staff must explore establishment of a system where money gets deposited up-front. This way the service doesn’t end up losing money. In addition the names of offending club owners are to be forwarded as part of a reporting mechanism to the common database being developed.