York Regional Police announced Feb. 5 that they arrested and charged seven Toronto Police officers, one retired Toronto Police officer, and 19 other suspects in a seven-month investigation into organized crime and corruption dubbed Project South.
Two of the suspects are youths. Three Peel officers have also since been suspended in connection with the investigation.
According to the police, the allegations of criminal corruption include bribery, obstruction of justice, drug trafficking, theft of personal property, breach of trust, and unauthorized access and distribution of confidential information.
The temptation must have been so great to tarnish the badge and corrode public trust.
Mending the broken public trust in Toronto and other Ontario police forces is the challenge police services face across the province.
Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw outlined what repairing trust entails.
“Restoring trust requires more than words,” Demkiw said. “It requires sustained effort, openness to scrutiny, and the humility of you to change.”
Mayor Olivia Chow said she supports an independent review and added what was required of the police chief.
“For every day Torontonians, their trust in police is fundamental,” the mayor said.
“The chief of police has to earn that trust back by rooting out officers who have committed crimes and make the necessary systemic changes after the independent review,” she said.
Ontario’s Inspector General of Policing, Ryan Teschner, launched a province-wide inspection on police integrity and anti-corruption practices.
Teschner described what that means for people who need to contact the police.
“People encounter police at moments of crisis, when they are frightened, injured, grieving, or in immediate danger,” Teschner said. “In those moments, public trust is not abstract. Without this trust, even lawful authority loses legitimacy, and public safety is weakened for everyone.”
Teschner’s statement gets to the core of what trust looks like on the ground. If there isn’t public trust in the police, then fear of the police takes its place.
Julius Haag, a University of Toronto assistant professor who focuses on police accountability and reform, says people trust the police because of procedural justice and fairness.
“The most important determinants we have in terms of our perceptions of the police are whether we’re treated fairly by the police, in our encounters with the police, and whether we believe the police are acting in a fair, neutral, and impartial way,” Haag says.
Haag says that, beyond having a voice with police, it is the way police address questions of accountability and oversight, and that this is done in a fair, transparent, and neutral way.
Are the police willing to aid in the investigation into corruption and the rooting out of ties to organized crime? Or will the continuing investigations into Project South be met with a big blue wall of silence?
The majority of the time, police work is critically important, complex and requires a great deal of care and skill while navigating the ongoing police perception issues around racial profiling, excessive force, implicit biases and abuses of police discretion.
Demkiw knows he needs to maintain authority and keep his force optimistic in this time of crisis. At the announcement of Project South, Toronto’s Chief of Police directly addressed Toronto Police members.
“To our over 8,000 members, the allegations against these individuals do not represent who you are. They do not represent what our organization is and stands for,” Demkiw said.
Premier Doug Ford says he doesn’t want the public to lose trust.
“In any organization, there’s always a few bad apples, and the courts are going to decide,” the premier said.
Let’s hope he’s correct and that this case is just about a few bad apples and not the tip of an iceberg.
