So Toronto police chief Mark Saunders says it is not the police’s fault that alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur was able to kill so many men whose bones were later found in flowerpots. It’s the fault of people who knew the man for not approaching the police earlier, which presumably includes some of his eventual victims.

“If anyone knew before us, it’s people who knew [McArthur] very, very well,” Saunders told the Globe and Mail. “And so that did not come out.” If they had voiced their suspicions, “I think there is a very strong potential that the outcome could have been different.”

It’s hard to imagine a worse thing for a police chief to say. It makes policing sound like a TV cop show — one cop’s called Sit, his partner is called Wait but I haven’t come up with a title yet — in which police sit back at the station expecting murder leads to come at them like water from a burst pipe.

The phone rings. Sit: “Who’s gonna get that?” Wait: “I got the last one.” Banter ensues.

Citizens approach a police force they trust. It isn’t trusted in Toronto’s gay village among many other places and it’s easy to see why. At least one victim had kept his sexual orientation secret from his family. Dare he tell the police his name? Did he fear a police car pulling up at his home, or blackmail? These are the terrors of a powerless person with secrets.

Women tend not to trust police. After a Globe and Mail investigation into sexual assault cases simply dismissed nationwide by the cops, would you report your rape? Look what happened when you reported sexual harassment. Women know that life can always get worse.

Saunders also claimed that serial killing “hasn’t happened in our city before.” Not true. Paul Bernardo prowled Scarborough. Peter Woodcock killed three young Toronto children in the 1950s and a fellow psychiatric patient in 1991.

In 2012, while police were failing to uncover clues about missing gay men, Shawn Lerner approached them about his missing girlfriend, Laura Babcock. Upon hearing that she had briefly worked as an escort, the police showed no interest. Just another missing girl.

They didn’t even check her phone records. Her last eight calls were to Dellen Millard, one of the men who killed her and burned her body in an animal incinerator. If the police had made even a token effort at finding Babcock, Millard’s subsequent victim, Tim Bosma, might still be alive.

My point is not to complain about Chief Saunders. He’s doing his best, as are many other fine police officers, and I thank them. But he is being undermined by the hyper-aggressive Toronto police association and its boss, Mike McCormack. The union is running the show.

I think all workers should unionize, but once done, keep the Toronto police as a model of worst practices. McCormack has ensured that Toronto citizens continue to endure a cacophony of terrible cops: the one with cocaine in his wallet (salary: $119,000), the pair getting so high from stolen pot that one of them climbed a tree in terror, the liars, the brutalizers. Think of Const. James Forcillo and his victim, Sammy Yatim. The union defends them all.

The union opposes cost-cutting and changes to traditional policing. Fair enough, that’s union policy. But police — civil servants with guns and now Tasers — have a higher calling: to serve and protect. They have often shredded that slogan, and Saunders shouldn’t have helped them do so by attacking innocent citizens rather than lazy policing.

Here’s a larger dilemma. I don’t think I would trust police enough to call them for help. In fact, there was a violent extended episode in my neighbourhood recently and I perhaps should have called, but didn’t. That’s awful.

Now I am solidly middle-class, so boring that my biggest worry is my feud with the lawn care company that broke my driveway. Even having a driveway makes me middle-class. If I wouldn’t call police, why would vulnerable citizens?

There’s one thing the police service could do immediately: mandate that police applicants have a university degree. Why not? Police earn fantastically good salaries — more than half earn over $100,000 a year — with enormous responsibilities. A university degree is basic for millennials. Why not for the next cadre of young officers?

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You see, a smarter cop would have looked for Laura Babcock.

hmallick@thestar.ca

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