In this issue:
1. Policing and COVID-19
2. Police use of facial recognition technology
3. Board suspends regular meetings
4. Assessing the Guns and Gangs initiative
Toronto Police Accountability Bulletin No. 119, April 3, 2020.
This Bulletin is published by the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition (TPAC), a group of individuals and organizations in Toronto interested in police policies and procedures, and in making police more accountable to the community they are committed to serving. Our website is http://www.tpac.ca
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In this issue:
1. Policing and COVID-19
2. Police use of facial recognition technology
3. Board suspends regular meetings
4. Assessing the Guns and Gangs initiative
5. Subscribe to the Bulletin
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1. Policing and COVID-19
As society has been almost entirely shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, all kinds of radical changes are occurring, in policing as well as in other parts of society. Maybe the Toronto police service will discover better ways of functioning.
The Toronto Police Association has requested that the rule of two officers in a car after dark in Toronto be abandoned temporarily in order to ensure reasonable physical distancing between officers. TPAC has been advocating for this change for many years. Hopefully the police service will look at this as a good chance to gather data on the effectiveness of this change in terms of deployment and call response.
The TPA has also asked that the `parade’ at the beginning of shifts – officers in a platoon are required to line up in a rank before a supervisor to receive whatever instruction the supervisor might wish to give – also be abandoned to ensure social distancing. It would be good to get rid of this military practice which bears little relationship to response to violence or community relations. Could this also be made permanent?
In the first two weeks in which physical distancing and business closure was put in place in Toronto, crime was generally down in all the major categories - assaults, robbery, car thefts, and break-and-enters. It is unclear what this means for policing. At the same time, police have announced they will restrict ticketing of vehicles to situations where the vehicle is actually causing a problem (as opposed to simply offending a parking regulation.) It seems this change was a result of the fact that a restauranteur was fine $400 when he was loading his van to take food to a food bank: his complaint seems to have led the police service to announce its new policy.
At the same time, police have significantly increased the number of speeding tickets issued. Obviously, there is much less traffic on the streets, and one wonders if this police action is simply a result of police looking for ways to show they are exercising authority.
Many have suggested that the police need to show much more leniency in enforcing laws against the homeless, including the suggestion that the Attorney General should instruct police across Ontario to not enforce the Safe Streets Act. To date police have not announced new procedures in response to those requests.
Police have been given sweeping powers by the Ontario government under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act to stop people and require them to show identification in order to require physical distancing. While one can understand the intent of the legislation from a public health viewpoint, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association notes this kind of power has often been misused, witness carding. Advocates have long demanded that the Toronto Police stop reporting undocumented people (many of whom are working in essential services during the pandemic) to the Canada Border Services Agency. How will these workers be protected from police and by-law officer overreach and bias?
It has been recognized that overcrowded jails are a serious concern for spread of the pandemic, and that steps should be taken to release many people from jail, particularly those near the end of their sentence, those non-violent offenders deemed a low-risk to re-offend, and those awaiting trial. The Ontario government has moved very slightly in this area, releasing about 1000 from jail. That’s a small number, given there are about 60,000 in Ontario jails, 40 per cent of whom have not been convicted of anything yet but are simply awaiting trial.
The amount of money that could saved by clearing many from incarceration is considerable: it costs more than $250 per day to keep someone in jail. More importantly, making less use of incarceration could lead to an entirely different model of how we look at anti-social and dangerous behaviour, moving away from punishment and establishing restorative justice as argued persuasively by Harold Johnston in his short and powerful book published last year, `Peace and Good Order.’
As some have said, a crisis should never be missed as the opportunity for making significant change. Perhaps this could be one of the positive outcomes of the pandemic for policing.
2. Police use of facial recognition technology.
In early February Chief Saunders ordered officers to stop using facial recognition technology. He stated he had not been aware that his officers had been using this technology since October.
It seems that officers had been using the facial recognition Artificial Intelligence program offered by Clairview, which scrapes the internet, including social media sites, for faces and then offers them to police for identification. Clairview claims to have millions of faces that police can work from, and many police forces in Canada and United States have now admitted their officers were using this program.
Members of TPAC met with Jim Hart, Chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, before Christmas. One of the issues we raised was the use by the Toronto police service of artificial intelligence programs. Our concern had been raised by a report in 2019 that noted the use of various A.I. programs by police services in Canada. (See Bulletin No. 114, June 25, 2019.)
Mr. Hart assured us that Toronto police used no such programs, nor did they intend to do so. Apparently he and the Chief were unaware of what officers under their watch were doing. The program represents a significant breach of privacy rights and has been rightly criticized by privacy officials.
We asked to be on the Board agenda in February with some simple questions: Which officers, in which division(s), were using this program?
Where did the officers get the authority to use this program? Who were the managers of these officers? If the managers knew this program was in use, why did they not inform senior managers? If they did not know, how effective was the management they were providing? Were those using the program acting in a rogue capacity? What disciplinary action, and what management changes, will be taken to ensure this does not happen again?
The Board refused to consider our letter at the February meeting, instead noting that Board members were very concerned about the issue and that the Chief would report on the issue in due course. One wonders whether the questions we posed will ever find an answer.
3. Board suspends regular meetings
In view of the guidelines and regulations announce to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board has suspended regular meetings for the foreseeable future. Using section 34 of the Police Services Act, the Board delegated to the Board’s Chair and Vice-Chair authority for the authorization, approval, awarding contracts, execution of agreements, or actions that otherwise would permit requests from the Chief of Police, where those requests are urgent and operationally necessary, to the ongoing operation of the Toronto Police Service. The delegation of authority would expire at the next regular meeting of the Board. It appears delegation does not include broad policy questions. Details can be found at tpsb.ca .
4. Assessing the Guns and Gangs initiative
The Guns and Gangs unit was established in 2006, after the so called `year of the gun’ in Toronto, when there were 262 shootings. The unit was tasked with controlling the gangs youth belonged to and the guns that those gangs used.
The Guns and Gangs unit has not had strong results. Shootings started to slowly increase for nine years, but then began to quickly escalate in 2014, from 242 shootings that year to 492 in 2019. While it is possible to argue that the numbers would even be higher in 2019 without the Guns and Gangs unit, it is more reasonable to suggest the unit has not been very successful.
The annual cost of the Guns and Gangs unit has never been made public. A request for the expenditure data was recently answered by the police service as follows:
“Combatting guns and gangs criminal activities is an ongoing activity with resources across the Service, including the Integrated Guns and Gang Task Force, allocated to it. Specifying the exact spending on guns and gang is not possible due to the confidential nature of their work and the significant indirect/supporting costs that contribute their efforts.
“Below is a breakdown of costs that can be disclosed to give an indicative sense of resourcing:
· This Task Force is part of the Organized Crime Enforcement unit within the Detective Operations Pillar. In 2019 the overall Pillar spend was $118M and in 2020 the budget is $125M.
· In 2019 and 2020, the Service received $4.9M in provincial funding from the Ministry of Solicitor General for additional digital, investigative and analytical resources to help combat guns and gang’s criminals in Toronto.
· In 2019, the City, Province and Federal government contributed $4.5M ($1.5M each) towards Project Community Space, an initiative that aimed to increase community safety in neighbourhoods that were dealing with increased gun violence.
· The Neighbourhood Officer Program has become an important vehicle for disrupting gang activity and bettering the lives of community members who are involved in gang activity or vulnerable to gang inclusion. In 2019, there were 135 Neighbourhood Officers (N.O.s.) deployed in 33 neighbourhoods across the City. This has been expanded in the 2020 budget to an additional 40 more officers and 10 additional neighbourhoods.”
A report in the Globe and Mail September 27, 2018 stated that the unit consisted of six teams of seven officers each, which would imply a total of about 40 officers, with annual expenditures of about $5 million. That does not include other officers seconded to the unit for temporary periods as noted above. Nor does it include the provincial money provided in the last two years ($4.9 million) and the further $4.5 million provided in 2019.
It is not unreasonable to think that the Toronto police spends about $25 million a year on the Guns and Gangs initiative – but that is only an estimate, and it may prove to be too low once all of the police resources allocated to this function are included.
Is this a cost effective way to spend money? Could this money be put to better use to actually get at the root problems of youth and guns? These questions do not appear to have received serious consideration by the Toronto police service, but given the increase in gun violence, they deserve close attention.
5. Subscribe to the Bulletin
To subscribe or unsubscribe to this Bulletin, please send a note to info@tpac.ca with the instructions in the subject line or in the text of the message. Our e-mail list is confidential and will not be made available to others. There is no charge for the Bulletin. Our website is http://www.tpac.ca .
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