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What Ontario Chief Human Rights Commissioner Renu Mandhane describes as the distrust of Toronto’s black community for the city’s police service isn’t going to improve by demanding the impossible of the police.

But increasingly, that’s what we’re doing — politicians are experts at it — making police the scapegoats for societal problems the police cannot solve.

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We call on the police when all other measures have failed to address such issues as gun-toting gangsters warring on our streets, not only killing each other in record numbers, but innocent bystanders as well.

In that context, the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s ongoing study of racial profiling and racial discrimination by Toronto Police illustrates the problem.

I agree with Mandhane’s demand, made earlier this month while announcing the results of an interim study on these issues titled “A Collective Impact,” that Toronto Police should make all of its race-crime data available to the OHRC as part of this study, as long as it’s made available to everyone.