Police chief Bill Blair is certainly good at making enemies.
He lashed out last week at the Special Investigations Unit for concluding that excessive force was likely used by police in two incidents over the G20 weekend. The unit, which deals with police infringements, said it couldn’t press charges since the officers couldn’t be identified.
One case involved Adam Nobody, a man beaten by six officers, apparently for not running fast enough. A video of the incident went viral, showing what seems like a mob of riot police chasing and beating an unarmed citizen. A false badge number was written on the incident report.
Blair slammed the SIU force for suggesting excessive force, saying his cops acted according to the highest standards and claimed the tape had been altered. Luckily, the SIU has reopened the investigation.
What Blair doesn’t realize is that some G20 police acted wrongly. Regardless of how difficult the circumstances are, police are expected — at all times — to protect the public and obey the law. Many Torontonians have stories of being kettled, chased by police, arbitrarily searched, and even beaten, often by riot police that were seemingly impossible to identify. There are lasting repercussions.
As Eye Weekly columnist Shawn Micallef put it, “when you mess around with [cities’] sense of basic liberty, the collective civic brain is short-circuited.”
Many Torontonians have a shaken sense of civil society. After my own G20 run-in with the police — albeit minor — I still get uneasy when I see a police cruiser drive by.
Until justice is done and guilty officers are prosecuted, Toronto’s public safety will remain compromised. The only way to fix our civil society is to restore trust in the police. The only way to do so is by prosecuting those police officers who acted wrongly — which shouldn’t be that hard, considering the many camera-wielding locals who went to protests and the thousands of tweets detailing every minute of the action. There’s plenty of documentation available, including photos of Toronto cops who illegally removed their name tags.
Right after the summit, Toronto Police Services launched an appeal for photographs, seeking information through social media to hunt down the Black Bloc protestors who caused the most damage. TPS dedicated many resources into finding the culprits, putting cops on the prowl full-time.
Given this, it’s ridiculous to assert that the police wouldn’t be able to identify their own. It would be prudent for community groups to organize a similar appeal for photos and start a private database of malignant cops.
There could be profiles for police that citizens allege to have used excessive or illegal tactics. The goal would not be to mount a smear campaign, but rather a concerted effort to organize documentation and bring the bad cops to justice. With no public inquiry in sight, it might be the best we as a society can achieve.
Innocent police don’t deserve to be distrusted, and nobody wants a boy-cried-wolf situation. Weeding out the bad apples — the relatively small number of officers who are guilty — will reintroduce public confidence in our police.
Similarly, the public deserves to know that no one is above the law, including the authority figures charged with enforcing it.
The Toronto Star recently ran a series of investigations into SIU probes that went unpunished or were under-prosecuted. One included a cop who sped into an illegal right turn, hitting 67-year-old grandmother Mei Han Lee and killing her instantly. The cop, who wasn’t on a call, lost 40 hours’ pay.
We need to trust our authorities. Ensuring safe communities is a shared task: police enforce the law and citizens report infringements and dangers.
It’s unreasonable for Blair to expect Torontonians to collaborate on solving crime when many feel disillusionment and indifference towards police. Until our authorities are bound by the rule, we will remain an untrusting society.
