Toronto police chief Mark Saunders is visibly tired. It is Friday afternoon, and he’s been conducting year-end media interviews much of the day.

He pulls up a chair to a coffee table inside his spacious office at Toronto police headquarters — a book of New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work tossed on the table — and takes off his glasses to rub his eyes. He wouldn’t be taking any time off in the week leading up to Christmas, he says. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

Much work lies ahead in 2016 for the new chief, who has held the high-profile job for just eight months. Hired in April to replace longtime chief Bill Blair, Saunders was celebrated by many as the city’s first black chief and a respected cop’s cop.

Most important, claimed the police board who hired him, he would bring the transformative change necessary to rethink policing, decrease soaring costs, restore public confidence and improve community safety.

But Saunders’ first year on the job was spent grappling with pre-existing issues far more than forging an innovative new policing path.

Inheriting a racially charged, ongoing dispute surrounding the controversial police practice of carding, Saunders became a divisive figure just days into his tenure when he announced he did not believe in abolishing the practice, calling it a valuable tool despite criticisms suggesting there is little to prove its effectiveness.

After the city asked for a one per cent decrease in the police budget, the Toronto Police Service instead requested a 2.76 per cent increase — one that could bring the budget over $1 billion, thanks in large part to a wage hike negotiated between the civilian police board and the Toronto Police Association. Nearly 90 per cent of the police budget goes to salaries and benefits.

As critics accuse Saunders and his police force of being resistant to change — “I don’t take the negative comments too personally” — the chief insists change is coming.

But he wants to make sure it’s based on reliable research, saying a recent report from consulting firm KPMG recommending radical cost-cutting measures contained “very inaccurate” information, though he twice refused to elaborate.

“We can’t just do change for the sake of change. There has to be a valid reason for it. We have to be able to show comprehensively that it is a benefit to the city of Toronto, it is more effective, it is more efficient in order to move forward,” Saunders said.

“But we definitely need to make some positive changes in order to be successful.”

In his first sit-down interview with the Star since he was named chief, Saunders discussed the challenges ahead and his goals for 2016.

Carding

In 2016, the province will bring in new regulations, establishing standards and limits on carding, the practice of stopping, questioning and documenting members of the public not suspected of a crime.

The province announced mid-2015 that it would develop Canada’s first provincial policy on the practice, also known as street checks. So far, the draft regulations have drawn mixed reviews, with rights groups saying they don’t go far enough to halt discriminatory stops.

Meanwhile, police leaders and unions say the regulations as written — which require police to inform someone they are carding of their right to walk away — will handcuff officers and keep them from interacting with the public.

Saunders would not address a “hypothetical” situation where his officers push back against the new regulations, saying they will enforce whatever law is passed.

“The men and women are professional. They are going to do whatever the law tells them to do. I don’t think there’s going to be a situation where they are going to say ‘we refuse to do that.’ ”

Saunders claims officers are having difficulty in the early stages of investigations without the information garnered from carding (a practice Toronto police suspended on January 1, 2015.)

Rights groups and critics have countered that there is little proof carding decreases crime and have repeatedly demanded data from police to demonstrate its effectiveness.

“There are going to be challenges, there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I’ve lost one of the primary intelligence tools for street-gang activity. I’ve lost it. So now I’ve got to figure out what Plan B is going to look like.”

Interactions with ‘people in crisis’

Next year Toronto police make more of the changes initiated by retired Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci in his 2014 review of the force’s interactions with people experiencing a mental health crisis.

Iacobucci’s report came after the July, 2013 death of teenager Sammy Yatim, shot by Toronto police Const. James Forcillo. The officer’s ongoing second-degree murder trial dominated headlines in 2015, and once again shone a spotlight on police officer conduct when answering approximately 20,000 calls a year for people in an emotional or mental health crisis.

New initiatives include the introduction of a third day of annual officer training focusing exclusively on these encounters — “I think that’s a significant statement,” Saunders said — and the introduction of sock rounds, a less-lethal use of force option he hopes will help keep the members of the public and his officers safe.

While Toronto police claim they are implementing, in full or part, 79 of Iacobucci’s 84 recommendations, former chair of the Toronto police board Alok Mukherjee has publicly questioned this, writing in an opinion piece for NOW magazine that little has changed for the rank and file.

Saunders would not comment, saying “I don’t want to respond to comments that aren’t accurate.” He said the leader on implementing Iacobucci’s recommendation, Deputy Chief Mike Federico, has received “tremendous” positive feedback from various members of the community agencies.

Saunders says he also hopes to make fundamental changes when it comes to interactions with people in crisis. The current approach to these calls is reactionary, and government agencies — not just the police — need to play a far more pro-active role, he says.

Saunders is “absolutely” open to bringing the so-called “hub” program to Toronto — an innovative approach to policing first introduced in Scotland. The program works by bringing together various community players, including social workers, teachers and police officers, to help prevent a crime or a crisis.

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“You don’t focus on behaviour as much as you do root cause. And once you establish root cause, you look for what the primary agency should be — who should be in a leadership role of that particular predicament?” Saunders said.

These kinds of community partnerships will be “one of the keys to our success,” Saunders said, saying he hopes they will reduce the number of calls to police each year.

Transformative change — and cutting costs

In December, the Toronto police board discussed a controversial report by consulting firm KPMG which makes several radical suggestions in the name of cutting costs.

The report, which was initially kept secret, urges major changes, including closing all 17 police divisions across the city and replacing them with “store-front” operations.

Saunders will now co-chair a task force to study ways to modernize the police service — something he says will be “a task force of action, not of words.”

But he stresses the need for well-researched decision-making, saying that while the KPMG report contains “some things that we can work with,” some information is “just wrong.”

Among the possibilities the task force will consider is a shift change; critics have long been calling for Toronto police to end four-hour overlaps that occur during every 24-hour period.

“We’ll be looking at a whole host of things. We’ll be working with the (Toronto Police) Association. Let’s look at our present model and ask ourselves, ‘Is this the best model for the city of Toronto, what changes need to be made, can we leverage technology better to assist us in being better at what we do?’ ”

Public trust

Across North America, police and communities alike are calling it a public trust “crisis.” Tensions are running high both in Canada and south of the border following increased scrutiny of police officers from citizen-shot video, high-profile shootings of black men and, in the U.S., violent clashes between law enforcement and protesters.

“Public trust right now is a challenge,” Saunders says.

Toronto police had its share of controversies in 2015, including the fatal shooting of mentally ill, black man Andrew Loku, and the death of Rodrigo Hector Almonacid Gonzalez who died after Taser-wielding officers came to his home in November.

In September, Toronto videographer Mike Miller was attempting to film the arrest of a black youth in the Jane St. and Lawrence Ave. W. area when two Toronto officers walked over to physically block his view. The officers used aggressive tactics to stop Miller from capturing the arrest, leaving him, he said, feeling intimidated and scared.

Saunders has seen the video, but did not want to comment as the officers’ conduct is being reviewed by police. “Those officers are going to have to explain their actions,” Saunders said.

Most officers make a meaningful contribution to the city every day, he said.

“Do we have some that slip up? Yes we do. But the vast majority of our officers are good at what they do and they have an understanding of what is required of them,” he said.

Listening to the citizens of Toronto — to their concerns, their ideas, their needs — is vital to improving relations in the future, Saunders said.

“I think that we have to be willing to change, we have to adapt with our communities. I think the road to success in the future is having a strong understanding of listening to the public and not assuming what needs to be done, but actually listening to what needs to be done and working in partnership.”

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