He lent his prestige to the Toronto Police Service (TPS)'s The Police and Community Engagement Review (The PACER Report), a procedure review commissioned by TPS Chief Bill Blair and carried out by Deputy Chief Peter Sloly.
This comes in the middle of an ideological turf war between the status quo and the reformers. On the side of the status quo are the Toronto Police Association with President Mike McCormack leading the troops with Chief Blair and many of the brass. On the side of the reformers is the head of the police commission Alok Mukherjee, and Deputy Sloly.
Since Chief Blair's term of office is over in May 2015 the new chief is expected by many to be Deputy Sloly, ie. a reformer, father of the PACER Report.
Just this weekend the reformers suffered a setback when Commissioner Mukherjee wrote in his personal website, “ISIS killed 3 Americans, Ebola killed 2 American police killed 500 Americans.” Mukherjee claimed he wasn't referring to TPS. McCormack immediately called for Mukherjee's resignation saying he is biased against police and is now going to the province to withdraw him.
To explain the TPS's performance, crime numbers are down and Toronto is considered one of the safer cities in North America and the world so as the saying goes, “if it ain't broke, don't fix it”.
As a cost cutting measure Chief Blair has suggested a wage freeze, replacing many of the police officers with civilians and shaving about four or five officers from every divisions. One questions whether the present number and deployment isn't the reason that the numbers are down.
More to follow.
Adu Raudkivi
