Dozens of people are addressing the Toronto Police Services Board today in the first of four virtual town halls that are taking place amid a global push for policing reform and increasing calls to “defund the police.”

Last month the police services board was supposed to debate a report that proposed a number of reforms, including the expansion of its mobile crisis intervention team program and the development of new “community based models” of crisis intervention.

The debate, however, was put on hold at the last minute after some criticized the measures as inadequate.

The board had initially planned to hold a single town hall to hear from the public but after hundreds of people signed up to speak, a decision was made to instead schedule four day-long town hall meetings.

The first two of those marathon meetings is taking place between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. today with another one scheduled for the same time period tomorrow. The final two town halls are scheduled for next week (July 15 and 16).

Some of the deputants signed up to speak represent community organizations but many of them are just private citizens.

So far a number of them have spoken out in favour of reducing the police budget by a specific amount while others have raised concerns about the effectiveness of reforms like body-worn cameras and anti-Black racism training.

“Mayor Tory you have called our demand to defund the police by a specific amount arbitrary and have talked about finding efficiencies instead but we are not calling for the police to be more fiscally responsible,” one of the deputants, Jermaine Collins, told the board during Thursday’s town hall. “The police are killing Black and Indigienous people so we want to financially disempower them and to strip them of their power to harm our vulnerable communities. We don’t want them to be economically efficient at killing Black and Indigenous people.”

“The recommendations are not sufficient and I think that they do not effectively target the underlying issues that police brutality and over policing has in our community,” another deputant, Hannah Johnson, said. “Body cameras are a band aid on an institutional issue. Instead of increasing the funds going to police services with more monitoring, there needs to be an understanding that the institution itself needs to change. I really believe that documenting police violence is not going to be enough.”

Council has asked staff to report back on alternative community safety model

The town halls come two weeks after city council passed its own motion on police reform but rejected a motion that would have reduced the force’s budget by 10 per cent, or about $107 million.

The motion that was passed asks staff to report back on a new community safety model that could lessen the need for police officers to respond to calls for people in crisis. It also makes 17 other recommendations ranging from equipping officers with body-worn cameras to improving training.

“A person who is in so much pain that they want to die doesn’t need an officer with a gun, a taser and handcuffs showing up at their door,” Rachel Bromberg, who is the co-founder of the Reach Out Response Network, said during Thursday’s town hall. “That person needs a compassionate trauma response by well-trained mental health experts.”

Each of the speakers at the town halls are being given three minutes to address the board.