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TORONTO — The first time Donovan Locke had to perform an intervention with an aspiring extremist, the 14-year-old in question had been caught spouting white supremacist views at a Toronto high school.

The parents were notified, along with the Toronto Police Service, where Locke is an acting staff sergeant and a coordinator of a new project attempting to address radicalization in Canada’s largest city.

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Before he left to have a chat with the student, there was a debate about whether Locke was the right choice for the intervention — the teen had apparently embraced racism, and Locke was born in the Caribbean.

But he went anyway, and got the race issue out of the way at the outset, telling the youth, “You may not like me but this is how I was born.” Said Locke: “I wanted to give him a different perspective.”

Like governments around the world, Canada has been puzzling over how to combat violent extremism. Radicalization and recruitment by Islamist extremists and the racist far right have exposed the lack of a clear counter-strategy.