The Ontario Human Rights Commission presented its watchdog’s interim report into racial profiling and discrimination against Black people by Toronto police at a packed press conference last week. But even as the commissioner was talking, many in the room were eyeing their phones — waiting for the police response.

They did so because no matter what the report into serious use of force incidents and “lived experiences” of Toronto’s Black citizens found, the police response that would set the tone for the discussions that follow.

The commission’s review of Special Investigations Unit (SIU) director’s reports includes the “disturbing” finding that between 2013 and 2017 seven of 10 people shot dead by police were Black. And while Black people made up just 8.8 per cent of Toronto’s population in 2016, they were involved in 25.4 per cent of SIU investigations and 36 per cent of police shootings over that same period.

The SIU investigates all serious injuries, deaths and allegations of sexual assault involving police.

Police released their response before the end of the press conference and while some eyes in the room rolled at police criticism of the report’s methodology, the response was, for the most part, measured. In it, police noted the commission’s findings require “a thoughtful and comprehensive response from us that builds on the hard work we have been doing already to confront issues of systemic bias.”

In a joint statement, the Toronto Police Service and the Toronto Police Services Board had spoken as one and accepted all five of the report’s recommendations.

Read more:

Black people ‘grossly overrepresented,’ more likely to be hurt or killed by Toronto police, racial profiling report finds

Breaking down the ‘disturbing’ data in Toronto police racial profiling report

Toronto marijuana arrests reveal ‘startling’ racial divide

Their statement expressed hope the report would cause “bigger questions to be asked and real solutions to be identified. Questions about poverty, social exclusion, inequality in our neighbourhoods and the root causes of crime and violence. Because once the police are involved, it is often that all other systems have failed.”

It read like progress.

I have been involved in Star investigations into policing, race and crime dating back to the ’90s. Police language has come a long way, and that helps make it easier for us all to talk about race and systemic racism in this city.

Activist and journalist Desmond Cole flagged the same on the CBC podcast Front Burner, released the next day, telling host Jayme Poisson the report “brings back into the public conversation an issue that we’ve now gotten more used to hearing about, and talking about, publicly.”

As for real progress, Cole said that’s about it. “I actually think that’s where it stops,” he told Poisson. “I don’t believe the truth will set us free when it comes to anti-Black racism and police violence. The truth will not set us free. We’ve been telling you the truth for hundreds of years.”

But police soon took a step back. In the days that followed, the Toronto Police Association and police Chief Mark Saunders both, to varying degrees, attacked the messenger — the association in email blasts and a video message to association members, the chief in media interviews.

It a first email to members, sent the day after the commission released its report, the police association slammed the use of census data to make per capita comparisons. A report that “fails to consider possible reasons for racial disparity in data is reckless, counterproductive and will only deepen the divide between the police and some marginalized communities,” the email said.

The association’s leadership went further in a second email the next day that called the report “inflammatory” and singled out researcher Scot Wortley, the University of Toronto associate professor who performed the analysis at the foundation of the commission’s report, for using census data.

Wortley is a respected academic, recognized by courts for his expertise, and — I make a full disclosure here — someone I know personally and professionally.

The commission’s report was a “personal affront and professionally damaging” to each of the association’s members, the email said, for alleging “widespread racial profiling and racism” by Toronto police officers. The association, it said, has retained a “respected academic” of its own.

In a short YouTube message, association president Mike McCormack told members: “There’s an inference that members are engaged in racially biased policing, and that is unacceptable.”

Saunders was far more reserved, but still sounded arguably defensive in on-air interviews.

The commission is using “using census and crime (data), and they don’t mix,” he bluntly told Metro Morning’s Matt Galloway.

Census benchmarking is regularly used by police and criminologists — and journalists — to calculate crime and homicide rates in order to look for trends, identify policing hot spots and look for disparities in who is being victimized.

It’s standard practice, but police criticism of census data isn’t new.

The distracting “duelling experts” reaction to the commission’s report is reminiscent of the response to a 2002 Toronto Star series that sparked a huge backlash by police, the police board and the police association.

The “Race & Crime” series found Black people charged with marijuana possession were taken to police stations more often than white people facing the same charge. And once there, police held those accused Black people overnight at twice the rate of white people.

The 2002 series also looked at some “out-of-sight” driving offences that an officer typically discovers only after a motorist has been pulled over, such as driving without insurance. Black motorists, the Star found, accounted for a third of charges despite making up just 8.1 per cent of the population.

Toronto’s Black communities were not the least bit surprised by the Star’s findings — just as they were unsurprised by the commission’s report.

But police dug in.

The police association called for a public boycott of the Star and then launched an unsuccessful class action against Star journalists and editors — myself included — for allegedly labelling every employee of the service racist. For that, the association sought $2.7 billion in damages. It lost at three levels of court, but the suit provided a legal platform and soapbox to attack the messenger.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The police service hired its own expert and a lawyer to vet the Star’s methodology and analysis. A two-page summary of their 2003 report, which remains posted to the police website, is written in all caps. It criticizes the use of census data and said the Star’s work was deserving of a spot in the “JUNK SCIENCE HALL OF FAME.”

The Star stood by the series, which was vetted prior to publication by an expert who deemed its methodology and findings sound.

A third academic analysis, conducted in part by Wortley, was critical of the police report.

Then police chief Julian Fantino denied racial profiling was happening, but later heard, in a secret October 2003 report from his own Black officers, that it very much was — and to those officers as well.

The contents of that report were made public by the Star in 2005.

In a letter to the police association’s board, Ontario’s chief rights commissioner, Renu Mandhane, said on Dec. 13 that the commission is “disappointed” in the association’s messages, which include “inaccurate and misleading statements, which should be corrected.”

The commission is standing firmly behind Wortley, whom Mandhane notes used a “substantially similar statistical analysis” to inform the Ipperwash Inquiry into the 1995 shooting death of Indigenous protester Dudley George. Wortley’s analysis in that inquiry was an “important example of a province-wide policing study,” Justice Sidney Linden said at the time.

Mandhane also pointed out the commission recognizes policing is vital to public safety and can be “challenging and sometimes traumatic,” adding the commission knows police “are committed to building trust with diverse communities.”

The commission said Wortley’s interim report raises “serious concerns about racial profiling and racial discrimination of Black people.” The findings, the commission said, “call for an explanation” from the service and its board.

In his preliminary report on the SIU data, Wortley concluded there were large racial disparities that had not diminished over time. That finding is “subject to interpretation and debate,” Wortley wrote in the report. What some may see as evidence of overt, implicit or systemic racial bias, he wrote, others will see as “evidence that Black people are more likely to be engaged in criminal activity and thus more likely to become subject to ‘legitimate’ police use of force.”

Additional analysis into other factors, Wortley wrote, “may help explain racial disparities in SIU use-of-force cases.”

The commission expects its inquiry will conclude in 2020, with more analysis coming of the SIU data and police reports and policies. The final report will include recommendations on how research into police use of force might be improved or expanded.

Understandably, there was also much public interest in the commission’s report this past Tuesday at the final Toronto police board meeting of 2018, where the board was scheduled to hear an update from its Anti-Racism Advisory Panel. But protests ensued after a motion to limit speaking time for deputants and, in response, the board moved the meeting behind closed doors.

The public and media instead watched a live feed in another room, and none of the planned deputations, including one from the human rights commission, was heard out loud.

Not a great moment.

Still, the board did ask the advisory panel to recommend changes to a 2007 policy on the collection, use and reporting of demographic statistics, and report back by May 2019. That policy was amended in 2010 and 2011, but has never been put into use.

The human rights commission has long asked police to collect race-based data in a more robust fashion and in its written deputation called on the service to collect race-based data on all stops, searches and use-of-force incidents by 2020, and release that data publicly.

That specific proposal went nowhere.

But maybe this time the board is at least on the right path.

And, for now, no one is filing lawsuits or typing in all caps.

—with files from Wendy Gillis

Read more about: