Dear John:

Several Star readers have written dagger emails designed to ridicule my endorsement of you as mayor of Toronto.

One arrived this week, titled, “We’re still waiting for the ‘I was totally wrong about Tory & I apologize’ column from Royson James.”

Mayor, I had been wrestling with that question for months. My answer to the reader was, “As soon as I reach that conclusion, I’ll do the mea culpa.”

I am writing, sir, in a desperate stab at redemption.

Mayor, you have made a royal mess of the policing file — a file you admitted months ago has your fingerprints all over it.

In pursuit of police reforms only you identified as pressing, you’ve been reduced to choked-up words decrying the erosion of your tight relationship with the city’s black community. You betray the very police chief you helped to hire. And now city councillors are being asked to return your well-heeled, political friend Andy Pringle to the police board so he can be positioned to become the rubber-toothed head watchdog.

How did we get to this? Integrity and honour and respect are supposed to be your calling card.

Could I have been so wrong about you, sir? Could so many have been? Is there hope that the mayor we thought we were electing last October will emerge from the wavering, right-wing-pandering, less-than-consultative stranger we see popping up on our screens everywhere?

Did we expect a lot? Yes. And we deserve it. Toronto is that special.

Where is the Civic Action John Tory (open John Tory's policard) — the one that said the Gardiner Expressway should be removed — for the future of his grandchildren and the glory of the city?

Where is the consummate consensus builder and why has he been eclipsed by a partisan created by political hacks who peruse opinion polls and then design public policy to match?

Where is the promised mayor who would unite city council around common themes, not polarize them in pursuit of political wins that pander to wedge issues?

Where is the respectful administration that empowers civic staff to inform and educate so that the politicians can weigh difficult options and make the right decision — not intimidate and bully and demean and prompt staff to already utter such abominations like, “Honestly, it almost makes me long for Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's policard).”

Why do you busy yourself with such a dizzying, dabbling, scatter-gun schedule of events and seem to spend not enough time in careful, thoughtful, comprehensive consideration of the serious issues facing our city?

No doubt you think you do both things well. The evidence to the contrary overwhelms us.

Your first six months has baffled many, including the city’s civic guardians, the intelligentsia, the elite, the majority that steers Toronto around the divisive extremes of the divided city, the ones who rallied around your candidacy for mayor in order to rid Toronto of the Rob Ford virus.

You haven’t torched the place. Yours is not a regime with a scorched earth policy of belt-tightening and tax-cuts, unsustainable neo-con nonsense. You are infinitely better than the guy who went before you. But don’t expect props for that.

We expect so much more, sir.

Last Thursday should have been such an exultant day for you. The Stephen Harper government is promising to give you $2.6 billion for your SmartTrack project. It’s a third of the cost for a project not yet approved. It’s money everyone questioned and predicted would never arrive. It’s a great coup for a John Tory mayoralty. Imagine, if that was what consumed talk radio and the media?

Instead, you had to reschedule the police services board meeting on carding, the controversy you created, so you could attend the SmartTrack announcement.

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The most damaging debacle of your months-old tenure as mayor is your screw-up of the policing file — something you rushed to embrace even as wiser observers waved the caution flag and urged you to avoid.

Who was your Pied Piper, sir, leading you trance-like to obvious disaster? Bill Blair, the ex-chief? Mike McCormack, the likeable police association head? I ask because, clearly, no one would willingly attempt the kind of reforms you initiated without an outside catalyst. In other words, you could not have invented such chaos and illegitimate and illogical changes all on your own.

The police services board had instructed then Chief Bill Blair to prepare directives to the rank and file that defined the clear public safety reasons for them to stop citizens not involved in criminal investigations and record personal info about such citizens. Police were to tell citizens of their right not to engage in such encounters. And police should leave a receipt, documenting details of the street check. Plus, the extracted info would make it into police data banks only after they were reviewed by a senior officer.

That was as perfect as it could get in a regimen where police do their police stuff of sniffing around, but need limits and restraint on their powers.

Chief Blair refused to write the directive. The police association groused that receipts would open their members to complaints. And you, sir, instead of backing the police board — the agency legislated to province civilian control of the very powerful police department — you pulled the rug out from under them.

First you insisted on sitting on the board, to wield your influence. Next, you removed the strongest watchdog and only black board member, Councillor Michael Thompson (open Michael Thompson's policard). Third, you appeared to deliver Mark Saunders as chief and block deputy Peter Sloly, who opposed carding. Fourth, you seemingly neutered the existing chair Alok Mukherjee. Fifth, you brought in a retired judge to “mediate” Blair’s intransigence. Sixth, you led the board in dismantling the old rules Blair refused to follow.

Then it all blew up in your face, as predicted. And you were forced to do an about-face. And flip-flop some more. Until, Thursday you were left endorsing the very policies you seemed to arrive at police headquarters to kill.

And we are left with a chief hired because he backs a policy and direction you now publicly excoriate.

This had better be the nadir of your term, sir. You’ve left little margin for error.

You are rich and powerful. You don’t need the political hacks who would dress you in garb more suited to the Fords. Get new advisers. Listen to people who love the city more than they love power. Be yourself.

Unless, of course, what we have seen is the real John Tory.

That would necessitate a different kind of letter I’d rather not write.

Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca

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