According to the Ontario Human
Rights Commission, black people are more likely to be killed by Toronto police
officers, nearly 20 times more likely.
There is a lot of distrust between the Toronto police and the minorities, which
begs the question of whether there is a racial angle towards police brutality.
Black people in Toronto make up just 8.8% of the population, and they are 20
times more likely to suffer fatal shootings at the hands of the police,
pointing to racial bias in police interactions with civilians. Toronto is
suffering from fractured relationships between the police force and the
non-Caucasian communities, relationships that stem from the brutality that is
meted out by the police to these communities more than the Caucasian
community.
The Ontario Human Rights
Commission report was a result of analyzing hundreds of reports from the
Ontario Police that were previously inaccessible, reports on police
investigations done by the police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit.
These reports were from two periods, 2000 to 2006, and from 2013 to 2017, where
investigations revolved around police and civilian engagement that resulted in
serious injury, death or sexual assault allegations. These reports showed that
black people were over-represented in
all the spheres the commission was investigating, from the use of force, sexual
assault and unjustified and inappropriate searches and charges, which showed an
obvious racial bias and discrimination. 7 out of 10 or 70% of fatal shooting
cases reviewed by the commission turned out to be back people, despite black
people making 8.8% of Toronto’s population. This is a shocking revelation that
shows just how much of a shift in Toronto policing is required. There clearly
is anti-black racism in the Toronto Police Service.
An analysis of the OHRC report
shows that as the seriousness of police conduct and lethal outcome of this
conduct increases, so does the over-representation of black people in the
statistics. Despite all these facts, and obvious practices that clearly show
bias and racism, the Toronto Police Service has denied the accusations of
systemic racism, but has however accepted the recommendations of the OHCR
report to improve race-based data collection. According to the report, in the
period between 2013 and 2017, black people were involved in 36 of 125 cases
that involved the SIU use of force, leading to serious injury or death. They
were also involved in 9 out of 15 police shootings that also resulted in
serious injury or death. Black people were also involved in 8 out of 13 cases
of use of force that resulted in civilian deaths. This is an overwhelming over-representation of black people in such cases, when you consider the population
of black people to white people in Toronto, which makes it appear as though
most crime in Toronto is committed by black people, who make up 8.85 of the
population, as opposed to white people, who make up about 47.7%. Any reasonable
person would conclude systemic bias in the Toronto Police Service.
There are other areas of research
that need to be carried out regarding police relations with black people, like
looking into patterns in the data collected, but recommendations made in the
meantime include race-based data collection for
the Toronto Police Service, the Toronto Police Service Board and other levels
of government. The police commissioner has agreed that data collection is
foundational in dealing with racial discrimination by law enforcement, pointing
to data collection exercises in the United States and the United Kingdom. He,
however, in the same breath acknowledged that the Toronto Police Service does
not consistently collect race-based data, and they have never been required to
do so by the police board. The findings of the OHRC report were disturbing to
the police commissioner and in need of immediate action to remedy the
situation.
The black community in Toronto
is, however, not shocked by the
findings of the OHRC report. They have been living with these atrocities all
their lives, being profiled, and being the recipient of discriminatory and
racially biased police actions that have in many cases led to unjustified
serious injuries or loss of life. They are also not very impressed with the
recommendations, with others saying they have seen this move before, racial
data on police interactions collected, the black community studied and nothing
done to remedy their predicament with the Toronto Police Service. According to
them, this will be another report that simply gathers dust on a shelf, and the
current situation of police bias and discrimination will persist. For this
issue to be solved, the police service needs to acknowledge that they have a
racial discrimination problem in the force, not refusing to acknowledge a
systemic issue exists and calling for the OHRC report to be scrutinized to
ensure it is fair and that it places the incidents investigated into proper
context.
References
Star Editorial Board. (2019). Time to collect race-based
data on police interactions with civilians.
The Star. Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2019/09/15/time-to-collect-race-based-data-on-police-interactions-with-civilians.html
Cecco L. (2018). Black Toronto residents 20 times more
likely to be shot dead by police, study
says. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/10/toronto-black-residents-more-likely-shot-dead-ontario-human-rights-commission-report
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