A decade ago, I ran for a Toronto city council seat in a downtown ward. One of my primary concerns was policing, and I didn’t hide my anger about the police aggression I had experienced and witnessed in the city. So I was surprised when my campaign manager told me a youngish, black staff superintendent named Peter Sloly wanted to meet with me.

When I met Sloly at his office at 40 College Street, he greeted me with a big smile. There was a familiar-looking stack of paper on his desk — Sloly had printed off every page of my campaign website, and made handwritten notes on the content. He knew better than I did that I wouldn’t win my election race, so his interest and encouragement meant even more. Perhaps he could relate to my situation.

After all, Sloly’s resignation as deputy chief yesterday comes after a career of fighting a seemingly hopeless battle for police reform in Toronto. Sloly has fought to end police carding, cut the force’s budget, and reduce the number of cops on the street. A black man who uses his position to push such an agenda is courting hatred and difficulty. Sloly did it anyway, and inspired hope in the process.

Chief Mark Saunders was a deputy chief alongside Sloly in 2012, when Saunders wrote a report denying the existence of racial profiling within the Toronto Police Service. Sloly called for revisions, which never materialized. As the public knowledge of and outrage against carding grew, Sloly was alone amongst police brass in publicly acknowledging racial profiling within the TPS and the damage it causes in local communities.

Sloly also added to the conversation about carding by personalizing it. On many occasions in the media, Sloly talked about how he had been profiled by police since he was a teenager. He acknowledged on my radio program that when he was profiled as an officer, he could flash a badge and end the nonsense. This was a refreshing contrast to Saunders, who admitted in an interview that he too was profiled as a young man, but ridiculously blamed the interactions not on his blackness, but on the fact he used to wear his baseball cap backwards.

Sloly put his name forward to become police chief last year, and highlighted his bid with a promise to end police carding. The police board, including mayor john Tory, didn’t go for it. The choice of Saunders must have made Sloly’s decision to leave a lot easier. When your boss wilfully ignores systemic racism, as well as your attempts to expose and address it, going to work every day is a challenge.

The kind of change Sloly advocated for within policing is coming. Across Canada and the United States, public perceptions and expectations of policing are gradually changing. It is increasingly becoming more difficult for police to defend huge budgets and forces as crime continues to decrease. The media’s apparent shock that Sloly would state the obvious shows how thoroughly journalists have become used to police silence and stonewalling.

Those of us who have disproportionately experienced police brutality, racism, and the absence of accountability are raising our voices in larger numbers. We cannot afford to remain silent, as policing threatens our very lives. We cannot wait for someone like Sloly to become chief and save us from our own police. Even so, voices like his helpfully pierce the police silence, and connect with people who have been organizing for accountability within their communities.

We’ve now learned that sometime after Saunders was appointed, Sloly asked the TPS to end his contract. Rumour has it he will apply to become chief in another city. That’s our loss. Police leaders can open up space for necessary conversations, as Winnipeg police chief Devon Clunis did in 2014 when he talked about colonialism, and its lasting legacy for Winnipeg’s indigenous population.

For the moment, it seems Toronto’s police service and its board will plow forward in denial. But Sloly’s work, especially his tremendous contributions to the Police and Community Engagement Review (PACER), have provided hope and opportunity in an otherwise hostile and tone-deaf institution. The TPS was better with Sloly — we’ll have to pick up where he left off, because there may not be anyone like him in Toronto’s police leadership for a long time.

Desmond Cole is a Toronto-based journalist. His column appears every Thursday.

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