In a morning news conference, interim Toronto Police Chief James Ramer said the force needs to do better. “As an organization, we have not done enough to ensure that everyone in our city is given fair and impartial policing,” he said.
You can read the Toronto Police Update at the bottom of this story.
“For this, as Chief of Police and on behalf of the police, I am sorry and I unreservedly apologize,” Ramer continued. “Publishing this data will cause pain to many. We need to improve and do better.” CLOCKS Chief Ramer apologizes for systemic racism to Toronto Police Department:
The Toronto Police Chief apologizes after the release of information based on the matches
Toronto Police Chief James Ramer has apologized to tribal communities following new data gathered by the force that showed the communities were “disproportionately overprotected.” Beverly Bain did not apologize to the No Pride in Policing team, which describes itself as a queer and transgender coalition formed in support of Black Lives Matter Toronto and focused on police absorption. In a tense moment during the press conference, Bain hit Ramer’s response to the data. “Chief Ramer, we do not accept your apology,” he said, emphasizing a passionate speech about how blacks, Indigenous people and other tribal groups had to deal with police in the city. Bain called Ramer’s apology a “public relations ploy” that is “offensive” to blacks and indigenous peoples. “We are not going to save our lives. What we have asked of you is to stop. Stop being violent to us. Stop killing us,” he said. CLOCKS Beverly Bain says the black community has never apologized:
“Mr. Ramer, we do not accept your apology,” he said
Beverly Bain of the Coalition Without Pride in Police addressed Toronto Police Chief James Ramer in a press conference on Wednesday based on match data.
More violence used against black people more often: data
Statistics never seen before, released today, come from a record of 949 incidents of violence and 7,114 investigations during 2020. The detailed analysis, compiled by the Force Equality, Integration and Human Rights Unit with external experts in consultation with a 12-member community panel, examines a wide range of questions. Among its findings were that blacks, Indigenous peoples and Middle Easterners were overrepresented in the number of “enforcement actions” taken against them in relation to their total population in Toronto. For black residents, it was 2.2 times. In other words, blacks made up about 10 percent of the city’s population that year, but faced 22.6 percent of police enforcement, which includes arrests, provincial offense tickets, precautionary measures and diversions. Similarly, blacks, Latins, East / Southeast Asians, and Middle Easterners were over-represented with 1.6 times, 1.5 times, 1.2 times, and 1.2 times, respectively, in terms of the use of force. Police also tended to use more violence against racist groups more often than whites, especially when it came to police officers pulling out their firearms. Blacks, South Asians, and East / South Asians were much more likely than whites – 1.5 times, 1.6 times, and twice, respectively – to have an officer point a gun at them during of an interaction. Statistics also show that racial differences in the use of force persisted even after taking into account what police were initially called upon to investigate and what turned out to be the main offense. For many tribal groups, the police departments in which they experienced the highest rates of violence were also those in which they accounted for a smaller percentage of the population, according to the analysis. “Our analysis of our data from 2020 reveals that there is systemic discrimination in our policing,” Ramer said. “That is, there is a disproportionate impact on racial people, especially those in black communities.”
Focus on systemic racism
The data is anonymous and is intended to highlight systemic racism and bias in policing, Ramer said. It will not be used to detect “individual acts of racism” by officers, he added. These are cases of misconduct and there are other ways for the force to deal with them, Ramer said. He added that “overt racism” would never be tolerated. The interim leader also addressed Toronto police officers directly, saying he believed they were more committed than ever to ending systemic racism in power. “I want you to know that this is an organizational weakness and it does not talk about your actions as individual police officers and political members,” he said. “But we, every member of the service, have to find the information being published today difficult and uncomfortable.” Ontario requires the public sector to collect race-based data as part of the Anti-Racism Act, and in 2019 the Toronto Police Council approved a data policy that would begin with the use of force and later expand to other police processes. such as stops. investigations, interrogations and indictments. Interim Toronto Police Chief James Ramer said the data would not be used to discipline individual officers because provincial law requires their anonymity before they can be analyzed. (Tijana Martin / The Canadian Press) The use of force data was obtained in part from reports submitted by officers to the Attorney General’s Office following interactions requiring medical care for members of the community, as well as whenever an officer draws or uses a firearm or Taser or uses another weapon such as a cane. or pepper spray. The 949 cases of violence reported in 2020 represent 0.2 percent of the 692,937 recorded police interactions with the public. The firearms were used in 371 of those clashes and were used in four, two of which were fatal, according to police.
TPS admits it has “abused” race-based data in the past
The release of the data comes in the wake of several recent reports by human rights watchdogs and police calling for major reforms to the Toronto police. In 2018, the Ontario Commission on Human Rights (OHRC) came to this conclusion Blacks were “overrepresented” in various types of violent police interactionsincluding use of force, shootings, deadly encounters and deadly shootings. The OHRC reported that between 2013 and 2017 in Toronto, a black man was almost 20 times more likely than a white man to be shot and killed by police. A follow-up analysis by the OHRC released in 2020 found that Blacks are also more likely than others to be arrested and charged during interactions with Toronto police. In its new report, the force acknowledged that it has “misused” data based on past matches. This is an obvious reference to carding – the practice of collecting identification information during random road checks – which the province significantly reduced in 2017.
Reforms have led to a dramatic drop in strip searches
The survey released Wednesday also looked at whether any racial groups were disproportionately represented in the strip surveys. The results show that indigenous peoples are 1.3 times more underrepresented than those present at the arrests. Meanwhile, black and whites were 1.1 times overrepresented. Toronto police re-examined their strip investigation procedures in October 2020, leading to a dramatic reduction in the number of investigations since then. Prior to the changes, about 27 percent of all arrests that year involved heap searches. That dropped to four about five percent later. The policy changes included that all lane searches were authorized by a supervisor and controlled by senior management. The reforms helped end the over-representation of indigenous peoples in strip surveys in 2021, the analysis concluded. But racial divisions remained for the black-and-white residents arrested. The changes were introduced after a 2019 report from the Office of the Independent Police Review Director found that Unnecessary and illegal strip searches have become a common practice between police forces in Ontario. The report released this morning also includes 38 actions that the force says will help address racial differences in incidents of violence and stripping investigations. Speaking to the media on Tuesday, a police official said an online checklist would monitor the force’s progress in implementing the actions in the coming months and years.
