The Ontario Human Rights Commission Interim Report on racial profiling by the Toronto Police Service

BY NANA ADJEI-POKU

In 2017, the Ontario Human Rights Commission launched an inquiry into racial profiling and discrimination of blacks, and in November of 2018 released “A Collective Impact”, an interim report on the inquiry into racial profiling and racial discrimination of the black community by the Toronto Police Service (TPS).

In that report, the key years focussed on were from 2013 and 2017.  During that time, it was shown that a black person in Toronto was twenty times more likely to be fatally shot by a Toronto police officer. Of note, black people only made up 8.8% of Toronto’s population but were over-represented in use of force cases (28.8%), shootings (36%), deadly encounters (61.5%) and fatal shootings (70%).

The SIU Director prepared a report, and it revealed that there was no legal basis for police who stopped or detained a black civilian in the first place; unjustified searches and unnecessary charges or arrests. The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) took the initiative to speak to approximately 130 individuals in the black community, and heard first-hand experiences about fear, trauma and mistrust members of the community had against the TPS. The OHRC then analyzed all the information collected, and expressed concerns about officer misconduct, transparency and accountability.

Courts even found that TPS officers provided biased and untrustworthy testimonies in some instances and were unwilling to cooperate with SIU investigations.

The purpose of the Collective Impact Report was to pinpoint the problems and make recommendations. The report recognized that blacks were less likely to cooperate with police investigations due to their negative perceptions of police.  Approximately ten years ago, former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair acknowledged that racial bias did exist within the TPS and made efforts to address the issues of the profiling at individual and systemic levels and also publicly support the OHRC inquiry.  In summary of that report, the OHRC called on the TPS and TPSB to acknowledge:

• The experiences and racial disparities raise serious concerns;
• Their continued support of the OHRC’s inquiry into racial profiling and discrimination of black people; and
• The collection of race-based data on all stops, searches and use of force incidents

OHRC also called on the City of Toronto to implement recommendations to deal with anti-black racism.

Fast forward to 2020. In the past week, the OHRC released the second interim report entitled, “A Disparate Impact” as a follow up.  This research was conducted by: Dr. Scot Wortley, Dr. Ayobami Laniyonu, Dr. Maria Jung and Erick Laming. They analyzed the TPS data in relation to charges, arrest, release and use of force data.  The issues of systemic racism and anti-black racial bias were also looked at by the group.  Here is a brief summary of the findings contained in the report.

It was noted that there is a serious impact on an accused person’s life once charges are laid, he/she has been arrested, put in jail and later found not guilty. This leads to a non-conviction record which can affect many things in a person’s life after the fact. The criminal offences the research group focussed on for this report were:

1. Failure to comply;
2. Obstruct justice;
3. Assault police;
4. Uttering threats against police;
5. Possession of Cannabis;
6. Other illegal drug possession;
7. Out-of-sight driving offences (including driving without a valid licence, driving without valid insurance, driving while suspended);
8. Disturbing the peace; and

The top three offences that were over-represented in relation to the black community were: obstruct justice (42.5%), out-of-site driving (35.2%) and cannabis possession (37.6%).  For those who are unaware of what out-of-sight driving offences are, they are when an officer checks a vehicle license plate and stops the driver before becoming aware that the driver has committed an offence. This fact is reminiscent to the “driving while black” reference many have made in the past when they have complained that an officer pulled them over because of their colour and then in that stop, it was discovered that they possessed a suspended license or non-valid insurance. This report just confirms what many have consistently complained about over the years.

Where a black person has been charged, there was noted to be a disproportionately higher rate where the charges were less likely to result in any convictions for the black individual versus their white counter part.

More up-to-date findings between 2016 and 2017 showed that black people were grossly over-represented in lower level use of force incidents (38.9%), whereas white people and other racialized groups were under-represented.  Black males accounted for 34% for all lower level use of force cases, while black females were under-represented, but were still 3.6 times more likely to be involved in the lower level use of force cases than white females, and twenty-five more times greater than women in any other racialized group.

The research group tried to pinpoint whether the reasons above occurred due to the fact that a lot of black people tend to live in high-crime patrol zones and come from single-mother households. What could not be explained is why the black community was grossly over-represented.

The OHRC is asking for action.

Let’s hope the final report is released within the next couple of years. This has been a call that has fallen on too many deaf ears and only involves the Toronto Police Service at this point in time. The next time a black person says they have been discriminated against or racially profiled, it is my hope that something gets done about it.