Mayor John Tory is gathering Toronto black leaders to talk about trust and police — but Black Lives Matter leaders are not invited.

However, his comments Monday might have opened a door to détente with the group.

Tory told reporters he knows some black Torontonians feel targeted and disrespected, face systemic barriers to equality and don’t trust the city’s police service.

He is reaching out to “some leaders of our black community” to have a private summit with him and Mark Saunders, Toronto’s first black police chief, as early as this week. Tory wants advice on making sure everyone “feels respected, feels included and feels safe in our city.”

Asked if representatives of Black Lives Matter Toronto — a loud, leading voice for police accountability and transparency in the deaths of black Torontonians — will be invited, Tory said: “No they won’t.”

The mayor said he has emailed the group four or five times asking for a private meeting, which its leaders rejected. The offer stands for a private meeting, separate from the one he’s organizing now, but “I don’t intend to send any more emails.”

Last week, coroner Dr. Jim Edwards said pressure from Black Lives Matter and other groups helped persuade him to call an inquest into the police shooting death last July of Andrew Loku, 45.

Tory agreed Black Lives Matter is an “important voice in this conversation.” He noted that, after Premier Kathleen Wynne spoke briefly to group members outside Queen’s Park, they met privately with one of her cabinet ministers before agreeing to hold four upcoming public community meetings on race and justice.

Tory said he expects that at an initial private meeting, you “set an agenda for future discussions, private or public, and decide who should be involved and what you should be discussing.”

Sandy Hudson, a Black Lives Matter co-founder, said that if Tory is suggesting he would participate in a future public meeting or meetings with her group after an initial private gathering, that is a first.

“He has never” opened the door to any public meeting with Black Lives Matter, she said. “If he’s not being dishonest about it, that’s absolutely possible,” that they could come to an arrangement.

“We are not encouraged with any kind of action he taking on his own when dealing with issues of race and racism,” Hudson said. “It’s not frustration with him not meeting with us — it’s the community, because he doesn’t know enough about the issues for the community to have confidence that he will take care of issues of anti-black racism.”

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