For 15 days, protestors camped outside Toronto police headquarters seeking justice for Andrew Loku, demanding the name of the officer who killed him, and calling for change from the chief whose office overlooked the “tent city” below.

Not yet a year as top cop of Canada’s largest municipal police service, chief Mark Saunders faced in March a prolonged showdown with Black Lives Matter Toronto — a group that would make a significant mark on Saunders’ 2016.

The chief was criticized for refusing to meet with Black Lives Matter during their camp out, which sprung after Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) cleared the unnamed officer who killed Loku in the high-profile 2015 police shooting.

Three months later, in a move that made national headlines, the group halted Toronto’s Pride parade, demanding police be banned from future Pride events.

And throughout 2016, Black Lives Matter continued to criticize the actions of Saunders, his force and the police board — including the move to retain personal information obtained through carding — and protest against “broken” police watchdogs, including the SIU.

Indeed, a province-wide review of police oversight announced in the wake of the Loku controversy is among the reasons 2017 could be a year of substantial change for Toronto police.

In a wide-ranging year-end interview with the Star, Toronto’s first black police chief said he can understand the group’s aims even if he doesn’t agree with their tactics.

“Activism is something that effects change,” Saunders said. “I understand that and I can appreciate that. I feel that they are a symptom of feeling that the justice system is not a fair system.”

Saunders maintains that he welcomes a meeting with the group — “I’m willing to listen and have that discussion and I’ve never taken that offer off the table” — but said some of the group’s demands and language crossed the line.

That included calls to identify and charge Loku’s “murderer,” Saunders said. The officer who fatally shot Loku in July of 2015 was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by the SIU, and “by law we don’t name names,” Saunders said.

The issue, of course, is far from so clear-cut.

Outcry over the SIU’s decision not to charge or name the officer who shot Loku led to demands for greater transparency, including more information about the decision. In April, the Ontario government launched a provincial review of police oversight bodies, led by Ontario Court of Appeal judge Michael Tulloch.

The report, to be released in March 2017, will make recommendations on the hot-button issues of naming officers and releasing SIU final reports currently kept secret.

Saunders says he understands the public demand to know the identities of the officers involved in the deaths of civilians, but says the release of names must be accompanied by information about the incident, to avoid a gap in knowledge that can create rifts between police and the public.

“If names have to be given out, I would want context behind that, and I don’t think that that’s a horrific ask, and the public is asking for more information,” he said.

Transformational task force

Tulloch’s police oversight report is only one of the potential change makers in 2017. Next month, the so-called transformational task force will release the final version of its plan to “redefine” policing in the city — an ambitious program to cut costs, increase public trust and modernize the delivery of police services.

Co-chaired by Saunders and police board chair Andy Pringle, the task force was created by the board late 2015, after the 2016 budget exceeded $1 billion.

The final report comes after months of consultations and town halls with the public, experts and police on the task force’s interim report, which made a set of bold recommendations. Among them: the closure of some of Toronto’s 17 police divisions, a three-year freeze on hiring and promotions, and a greater focus on technology to get officers out of their cars and into the community.

A common public demand was for officers who know the neighbourhood they’re policing — “it didn’t matter where we went . . . that was something that was predominant from start to finish,” Saunders said. And feedback from the consultations will be reflected in the final version of the report; the task force understands success depends on buy-in from all affected.

The toughest sell may be the Toronto Police Association. In recent weeks, the union has amped up criticism of the task force through its “Stop the Toronto Police cuts” social media campaign. It alleges the task force’s hiring freeze will cause a dangerous reduction in officers, resulting in slower response times.

Saunders denies that. Officers will be used more efficiently, in part through a new dispatch system he says will prioritize calls for services only police officers can provide — “being where people need us most.” Wherever possible, non-emergency calls will be referred to other city services.

“(The Toronto police union) is concerned about the safety, and I would never sign an agreement if I thought that the officers’ safety was compromised or if I thought the community’s safety was compromised,” Saunders said.

Carding

Carding, the controversial police practice of stopping and documenting people not suspected of a crime, dominated the first few months of Saunders’ tenure in 2015. But it soon became a provincial issue when the Ontario Liberals stepped in to regulate the practice.

Finalized in March 2016, the Ontario regulations take effect Jan. 1, mandating a host of requirements, including that police inform those they stop of their right to walk away, and provide a receipt following a carding interaction.

For much of this year, police services across Ontario were required to provide their officers with necessary training on the new rules. As of Dec. 21, 80 per cent of Toronto police officers had been trained, and Saunders assured “our officers will be ready to go” by the Jan. 1 deadline.

Now, it’s time for the public to be schooled, Saunders said. He says a “very robust education piece” is will be necessary to eliminate confusion about the kinds of police interactions covered by the province’s new rules.

“If my officers are stopping someone because they’ve got the grounds under the Criminal Code, and if that person keeps hearing the narrative you don’t have to talk to the officers any time . . . there’s a fallacy to it.

“You could not talk, but then what you do is you give the officer the opportunity to now apprehend you under the Criminal Code, arrest you, take you into the station to further the investigation, so it’s not as cut and dry as people think,” Saunders said.

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Culture change

Culture change has been a repeated recommendation in recent Toronto police reports on varying topics: police use of force, authored by retired justice Frank Iacobucci; modernization, written by the transformational task force; and interactions with people with mental-health challenges, presented to the Toronto police board this month by a panel of health experts.

Toronto police have heard that culture change is particularly urgent in the context of fatal police shootings. As Iacobucci wrote in his 2014 report on police encounters with people in crisis, there exists an “unhelpful” attitude that in policing, deaths are inevitable.

Saunders says that means placing a greater emphasis on the ‘serve’ in ‘serve and protect,’ achieved in part by shifting how success as a police officer is gauged and defined. He cites the creation this year of a new honour at the police awards, recognizing excellence in de-escalation.

“It’s not just what you do that’s important anymore — you know, we arrested this many bad guys — it’s how you do it. That’s the new measurement of success right now,” Saunders said.

That also means accounting for what Saunders is calling the “social cost” of policing. As part of the transformational task force, the controversial Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) unit is being disbanded; TAVIS officers had become too notorious for their high rate of carding and frequent community complaints about aggressive tactics.

“In everything we do, there is a social cost, and if that social cost outweighs what we’re doing, then it’s not effective policing,” Saunders said.

That calculus may once again apply to the divisive issue of conducted energy weapons, better known as Tasers. This year brought a push by Toronto police for nearly 50 per cent more Tasers, increasing access to the weapon to a greater number of front-line officers (the force’s 545 Tasers are currently only available to select few uniform front-line supervisors and some members of specialized units). The police board now plans to conduct community consultations.

But in November, Rui Nabico, 31, was killed after he was Tasered by a Toronto police officer, a tragic reminder that the health impacts of the weapon are not fully understood, particularly when used on vulnerable people, including those in crisis.

In a report last year, Toronto police said it was “satisfied that the current medical research” found no persuasive evidence of risk to vulnerable persons.

However, Saunders said that while he supports providing officers with a less lethal option on their belt, “there needs to be a bit more research I think and then hopefully we can have that discussion.”

Lessons learned

When Saunders unveiled the new Toronto police squad cars, dark grey Ford Interceptors, the feedback was swift. “Aggressive,” critics said on Twitter. “Militaristic,” councillors said in a motion passed at City Hall.

With a growing chorus saying the switch from white to the harsher grey cars sent the wrong message, Saunders backtracked on the change in November.

Saunders says the squad-car decision was among his biggest regrets in 2016 — though he won’t admit the cars themselves were the wrong choice.

Instead, he says he reversed his decision to go grey because it became a “distraction” from his officers’ work. “When the grey car story takes lead over the arrest of a person for murder, it’s time to take a step back,” he said.

The mistake that was made, he said, was that there wasn’t sufficient public consultation on the change. “That would have probably changed the dynamics of the dialogue,” Saunders said.

It rings true to the larger lesson Saunders says he learned in 2016.

“I’m a lot more cautious with my words, I tend to listen more to everybody, and not to as small a group as I listened to before. Gotta hear all sides, and respect all sides.”

Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca

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