Toronto has a new police chief. Only, he’s the old police chief. You haven’t heard?
Torontonians can be forgiven for not keeping up with developments at police headquarters these days. It’s been a tightly closed shop ever since James Ramer took over from Mark Saunders in the heat of last summer’s protests over the police custody death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet – and questions that raised about anti-Black racism and the police handling of people in crisis.
A deathly cone of silence has fallen over the goings-on at 40 College and, in particular, the chief selection process. The Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB) was supposed to be busy finding a replacement pronto after Saunders’s abrupt exit to finally start making much-needed reform, not to mention, finding ways to meaningfully cut the bottom line.
But a year after Ramer assumed the “interim” chief label – which curiously disappeared from his title a few months into the job – his contract has been extended another 17 months until December 31, 2022.
The TPSB said in a statement released Friday that the extension “will ensure a better transition to the next Chief.”
But former TPSB chair Alok Mukherjee isn’t buying it. As he told Global News, the process of selecting a new chief shouldn’t take more than a few months. The Board has had a year. What gives?
The truth is it had already had been rumoured that Ramer had asked for a two-year contract when he took the interim job, which would have taken him to July 2022 in any event.
Still, news of his extension has given policing critics reason to wonder if Ramer is being tapped to take over.
Ramer has said he will not be applying for the job. But it’s hard not to notice how effusive TPSB chair Jim Hart was in his praise of Ramer, in the statement announcing the extension. Hart described Ramer’s leadership as “nothing short of outstanding, effectively championing his members internally, while also always working collaboratively with the Board and other stakeholders to ensure that policing services [are] delivered in this city professionally, equitably, and with compassion.”
The TPSB’s statement goes on to offer a practical explanation for Ramer’s extension saying it “will also allow for an effective transition period that can support continued progress on the Board’s and Service’s community safety priorities.” Those priorities include the Board’s 81 policing reform recommendations and the findings of the Independent Civilian Review into Missing Person Investigations into the force’s “discriminatory” mishandling of the Bruce McArthur serial killings and other cases involving the LGBTQ community.
However, Mayor John Tory’s commitments in particular to reconsider police spending in a significant way post-Saunders have mostly stalled, it not fallen completely by the wayside. He still ended up giving the cops more than $1 billion.
The recent show of force to clear park encampments also suggests to TPS critics that not much has changed in the force’s thinking when it comes to building trust with the vulnerable communities it polices – be they people experiencing homelessness, Indigenous, people of colour or LGBTQ+.
Recent moves in police senior ranks and on the TPSB signal a continuation of the law-and-order agenda, despite a stated recommitment to reform.
For example, former Board vice-chair Marie Moliner – essentially the TPSB’s last remaining progressive voice – left her position early before her tenure was set to expire next year. She has been replaced by Ann Morgan, a former Crown attorney.
Moliner’s role as vice-chair has been taken up by Frances Nunziata, who is widely seen as the police union’s voice on the board, which in any event makes her more of a police apologist than a reformer.
There have also been the resignations of the force’s two female deputy chiefs, Barbara McLean and Shawna Coxon, both of whom had been strongly tied to the force’s reform efforts.
The search for a new chief is supposed to be international in scope, but Toronto has never selected a chief from outside its ranks. The kind of meaningful change policing reformers are looking for won’t come from hiring from within the Toronto police. They say that the culture needs a wholesale shift, and the only way that’s going to happen is by bringing in someone from the outside.
It’s more likely Ramer’s extension is tied to grooming someone already in the ranks to succeed him. Peter Yuen, who was named deputy chief at the same time as the departures of McLean and Boxon, is an early name that’s surfaced as a possible replacement.
The Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, headed by former mayor John Sewell, suggests that beyond the selection of chief, “it would be more important for the Board to actually adopt a progressive agenda into which it might slot a new chief.” Clearly, that agenda isn’t happening fast enough for most of the force’s critics.
The consultation process to select a new chief, meanwhile, is being touted by the Board as the most far-reaching in the force’s history. But that too has been shrouded in some secrecy.
The TPSB held four virtual meetings to allow for public input. Environics has since completed consultations with various groups and individual stakeholders, including representatives of Toronto’s Black and LGBTQ communities. But who those representatives are is not a matter of public record. Danielle Dowdy, an advisor to the Board, says the force “did assure confidentiality to those who participated in the process so cannot provide those details.”
The list of individuals and groups who participated in that process, Dowdy says, “was led by Environics… through their own pre-consultations, as well as working with our office and the City Manager’s office.” The process will now move to a search for candidates by Toronto-based Boyden Consulting Management Inc. “to find the best candidate for this significant appointment.”
Sewell says he expects that Environics’ report on what people want in a new chief “will show the Board will have difficulty finding anyone suitable within the policing community.”
