When I was growing up, a black kid in Toronto, the idea of becoming a police officer was anathema, like a wilful decision to play for the wrong side. Police were viewed as a source of concern, if not as the outright enemy, for those of us who lived in poorer neighbourhoods. Along with schools and courtrooms, the police were essentially there to ensnare our life chances, we believed.

Yes, plenty of cops were racist and behaved badly. Some were even downright criminal. So I always wondered how the black men and women who signed up to become police officers managed to do it. What were they hoping to achieve? What personal costs were they willing to pay? How did they maintain a good conscience?

But I later realized that it wasn’t just about good guys and bad guys – or as some like to say, good and bad apples. The institution and its troubled history were bigger than its personnel. It was police culture that was the problem.

There were, of course, black police officers who won our respect, some of them even moving up the ranks. We grew proud of them despite our misgivings about their chosen profession.

I can still vividly recall the deep sadness that swept through the black community when Constable Percy Cummins was shot in 1981. He remains the only black Toronto police officer to be killed in the line of duty.

Mark Saunders, to the surprise of many, would eventually grab the Holy Grail itself, becoming Toronto’s first black police chief. Although he was – and some say remains – an unknown in the black community, he had at least earned respect among his colleagues as a “cop’s cop.”

And then there’s Peter Sloly. He was a different cat. Brash, confident and polished like none before him, a law enforcement rock star who perhaps jammed a little too loudly in the end.

When the 49-year-old former deputy chief jumped ship on February 10 after 27 years with the Toronto Police Service, it was a spectacular denouement to a remarkable career. The zeal with which he ditched his employer underscored how bad things had become after that torrent he unleashed at a youth leadership forum a few weeks earlier, where he’d told a group of young city-builders that the $1 billion police budget was out of control and that available crime-prevention technology was being overlooked. He added that the level of public trust in the police had gone subterranean. Progress on racial profiling and carding? Don’t ask.

Personal disappointment was in there, too. Visibly smarting from not being selected for the top cop post, Sloly said he was still “going through the five stages of grief.”

Oh, and then there was this: “I’m still bleeding from multiple cuts in the back and the front,” he told the forum.

Many among the rank and file were said to feel vindicated by Sloly’s broadside. For years the word on the police street was that Sloly was a self-interested showman who couldn’t be trusted. He’d finally shown his true colours.

But that was about style. What really did Sloly in was his candour about the need for police reform.

In addition to its being a rare instance of police infighting laid bare, Sloly’s quick exit confirmed what many of us have been saying about the TPS for quite some time: this is one organization that will resist change to the end.

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Sloly’s story – he was born in Jamaica and arrived in Canada at the age of 10 – constitutes a study in supersonic career mobility.

After crashing out of professional soccer with a knee injury, he joined the police force in 1990 and moved into senior positions in record time. He became deputy chief of executive command in 2009. His rapid ascendancy, and a growing sense in the rank and file that he hadn’t earned it, garnered him a fair number of detractors. It didn’t help that Sloly could be cocky, perhaps even arrogant.

He seemed to cherish media scrums, and he had a noticeable penchant for clever sound bites. There were even people in the black community who distrusted his polished presentation skills. But he also developed a reputation as a police leader with progressive ideas. And that was rare in a paramilitary organization hostile to change.

After taking over the community safety command, Sloly started to talk about the need to do policing differently. He was a keen Twitter user, one of the first police officers in Toronto to tout its value as a tool for community engagement. He seemed to relish the cut-and-thrust of being accessible via the internet. He wasn’t afraid to say the previously unsayable, and as the chorus against carding grew louder, he dared to acknowledge the existence of racial profiling when his counterparts were busy concocting denials.

After the Toronto Star’s investigation into carding, Sloly became the lead responder to claims that racial profiling had resulted in the disproportionate stopping and questioning of mostly black and brown males. The Police and Community Engagement Review (PACER) he spearheaded in 2012 was meant to examine police conduct with respect to community interactions.

Sloly’s stars had aligned to cap his meteoric rise to the top, or so it seemed at first. PACER got off to a sound start and secured tepid support from community advocates. Even then chief Bill Blair gave his blessing.

The PACER committee delivered a report in 2013 that contained 31 recommendations on how to reform the Toronto Police Service. Among them were increased police training on racial profiling, deeper community consultation and research into community policing approaches.

On the whole, the project was a comprehensive attempt to address what makes policing in Toronto so problematic. Another of its recommendations was the adoption of body-worn cameras as a way to build trust in the police.

But it wasn’t meant to be. The police board’s poor handling of a defiant Blair left the committee’s work bogged down. Blair’s unwillingness to cooperate with the TPSB on carding signalled that PACER would not be supported by everyone, least of all the Toronto Police Association.

The body-worn cameras pilot project should have been designed to cover all informal police/black-community interactions and mental-health-related calls for service. But it was soon so watered down that officers were given the option of turning the cameras on and off. Newly appointed Chief Mark Saunders would eventually remove oversight of the pilot from Sloly. The board, including Mayor John Tory, sided with Saunders on that one.

Before most people realized it, Sloly and his vision of a new policing paradigm were isolated from above and below. Quicksand was enveloping him. Arguably the most promising candidate for police chief in T.O.’s history could only watch as his glittering career sank out of sight.

The black community is dismayed at Sloly’s departure. There’s a pervasive feeling that no one in the police service’s senior leadership understands their perspective. With Sloly gone, supporters of the status quo have a lot less to worry about.

But I don’t wholeheartedly accept that Sloly would have made a meaningful difference had he won the chief’s job. After all, he was a veteran cop. And that comes with its own special set of obligations.

When I was commissioned by the Police Services Board to lead a study examining community experiences with carding in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood in 2014, I had a few email exchanges with Sloly. I requested access to police data that would help contextualize the study’s findings. To my surprise, he agreed to have someone gather and deliver the data. I was impressed.

Then after weeks of back-and-forth, nothing happened. I never heard back from him until I was asked to present my report to a meeting of the board. Just before I took my seat at the table, I received an email on my cellphone. It was the force’s lawyer informing me that no police data would be available. The deal was off.

I remember looking over at Sloly who was seated in his usual spot at the meeting after reading the email. I wanted to make eye contact with him. I wanted to acknowledge his well-played chess move that resulted in zero police cooperation with our work. But he never looked my way.

Sloly is not Toronto’s police chief. This is not because he was a skilful careerist who was disliked by the troops. It’s because he was an officer who dared to think about changing the game.

While I watched Sloly at his final press conference at police headquarters, questions from my childhood resurfaced. Could black people who identified with their community and cared about its well-being really make a difference in policing? I finally got my answer.

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