Creating process for Toronto police's race-based data policy 'worth it:' former anti-racism panel co-lead

A University of Toronto professor who helped develop the framework for the Toronto Police Service’s race-based data policy is welcoming the release of unsettling new statistics on use of force incidents, which she says validate “the magnitude of what the Black community deals with daily” and serve as “step one” in actually addressing it.

Toronto police released data earlier this week which showed that Black people were over-represented in use of force incidents compared to their share of total enforcement actions by a factor of 1.6 in 2020. The data also showed that Black people were 2.2 times more likely to be subjected to enforcement actions in the first place.

Notisha Massaquoi led Toronto Police Services Board’s 10-member Anti-Racism Advisory Panel, which over a three-year period consulted extensively with Black community organizations and individuals, unions, post-secondary institutions, and various police jurisdictions to set up the process that led to the creation of TPS’s race-based data policy and ultimately set the stage for this week’s revelations.

Speaking with CP24 on Wednesday, she said the release of the data shows “you can implement a policy and you can force change.”

But, she said that the process of accounting for what the data shows has only just begun.

“This is monumental. … It (represents) years, decades of advocacy and work by the Black community in Toronto. It’s taken us 40 years to get to this day,” Massaquoi said.

In 2019, as part of the provincial government’s Anti-Racism Act, all police services in Ontario were directed to begin collecting race-based data for use-of-force under the province’s Anti-Racism Act. That September, Toronto police Services’ Board unanimously approved a race-based data collection policy and got to work. Aside from gathering information about use-of-force instances, Toronto police also collected race-based data on strip searches.

The panel helmed by Massaquoi, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough’s campus, helped fulfill that mandate.

Calling the process she led one of the “hardest” things she’s ever done, she said it was "worth it" as this race-based data collection policy has resulted in the start of both “validating the magnitude of what the Black community deals with daily” in this city and holding the members of Toronto Police Services accountable for their actions.

Massaquoi, however, said that apologies won’t be sufficient given the extent of what the data shows.

“We weren’t making this stuff up. …. It’s Step One of (Toronto police) actually listening to us and believing us as a Black community,” Massaquoi said, adding the goal is for all police interactions across Canada to be fully documented and made publicly available, followed by steps to change any discriminatory outcomes.

“It’s Year One and we need to perfect this process, but there should be no delay,” she said.

Toronto's police chief, James Ramer, apologized “unreservedly” as the statistics were published on Wednesday, noting that the data points to “systematic racism” in the force.

“We must improve; we will do better," he said, pointing to 38 actions that will be taken to end systemic discrimination in the force.

NDP MPPs Jill Andrew (Toronto-St. Paul’s) and Laura Mae Lindo (Kitchener Centre), both of whom are members of their party’s first-ever Black Caucus, are crediting Massaquoi and her team for their “leadership and years of hard work in bringing this first report to light.”

“The Toronto Police Service’s findings today are not isolated incidents, but part of a longstanding pattern in Toronto, Ontario, and Canada. The only way to finally break this vicious cycle and ensure lasting justice and equity for Ontarians is to fundamentally change these broken structures,” they wrote in a June 15 statement, which pointed to the need to strengthen the province’s Anti-Racism Directorate.

“It has long been clear that Black folks, as well as Indigenous and racialized people are treated inequitably by police as a result of systemic racism and are deeply fearful of interactions with police.”

Andrew and Lindo went on to say that it’s “long past time to actually take urgent action” to address “systemic racism in policing and individual acts of police violence,” which they said have been “studied, reported on and apologized for repeatedly over the past several decades.”

“Black, Indigenous and racialized communities have given substantial input on what steps must be taken,” they said.