A break from all this mayoral mayhem.
Let’s get down to some real brass tax, as in the police brass.
Some great PR for the Toronto police service in recent days, most of that centred around the promotion of Peter Sloly to deputy chief.
Progressives on the police services board are talking up Sloly as chief material, the man of the future, the city’s first black top cop.
Sloly’s certainly qualified and fits the bill for a police service that’s modernizing (the homicide unit has its first female head) and has made strides in recruiting young men and women that actually reflect the city they’re charged with policing.
But reality is that the odds are seriously stacked against Sloly.
Mayor David Miller’s surprise announcement that he will not be seeking re-election has the potential to seriously remake the look of the police services board, those that will ultimately be charged with hiring a new chief.
Right now, the board, made up of four city appointees and three provincial appointees, looks pretty progressive.
But that cold all change if, say, a John Tory became mayor. Hand those plum jobs to a few law and order types when the terms of the current members expire and, bang, bang, all that feel-good, community-based policing’s dead.
After five years on the job, the current chief, Bill Blair, has managed to turn the force closer to the community-based model of policing that is more proactive and seeks to prevent crime before it happens by taking cops out of their cars and putting them on the street.
It’s working. Crime rates are lower than they’ve ever been.
The police board is not supposed to hold sway over the operational decisions of the force.
But the board does have power over hiring and firing. When the upper ranks are involved, those decisions become highly-politicized. The mayor has the biggest say.
How do you think someone like Julian Fantino was able to become top dick in T.O. – without even bothering to apply for the job? Lastman was mayor then. And gun-toting, Corvette-driving Norm Gardner the board chair.
Blair’s contract was quietly renewed a few months back so he’ll be top dog for the foreseeable future.
A year from now, though, there’ll be someone else calling the shots at City Hall.
The other wild card in this potentially volatile mix is the Toronto police union, whose members are now voting on a new president. Any candidate for chief must be at least somewhat acceptable to the union, to avoid the risk of labour strife.
Should frontrunner Mike McCormack take over there (his name has been attached to some of the biggest corruption scandals the force has ever seen, though the charges have never stuck), we may see a return to the militant days of the so-called Men in Black and their cigar-chomping ex-leader Craig Bromell.
In which case, there’ll be no favours for Blair and company. The TPA likes policing done the old way, cops in cars, guns at the ready, all good guys versus the bad.
As for Peter Sloly, his 15 minutes may already be up, as much as it hurts to say it.[rssbreak]
