Susan Eng
Toronto Star
May 13, 2006
Monday marks the 50th anniversary of first meeting of the Metropolitan Board of Police Commissioners — the beginning of civilian oversight of policing in Toronto. We asked former Toronto Police Services Board chair Susan Eng to comment on the value of civilian police oversight.
If there were no police services board in Toronto, would we invent it? Sorry, you’ll have to repeat that, I couldn’t hear over the cheering of police officers.
When police chiefs and union leaders say they are accountable to everybody, they don’t mean it in a good way.
Police are given extraordinary powers over us in order to serve the public good, to maintain order and our safety. They serve the public, not the other way around. Civilian oversight exists to ensure that the appropriate checks and balances are in place to ensure this accountability. When police speak of accountability, they speak of it in resentful terms whereas they should see it as part of a proud duty in a democracy.
Therein lies the essential cultural divide between police and the bodies dragged into place to hold them accountable to civilian authority.
To appreciate the vacuum created when there is inadequate civilian oversight, consider the lack of responsiveness by the RCMP regarding the killing of Ian Bush in British Columbia.
(Bush, 22, was shot by a police officer in what they say was a struggle as he was being released from custody last October. Bush had been arrested for having an open beer at a hockey game.)
To quote the RCMP spokesman about the six months’ delay in getting any answers: “It takes long because it takes long” and regarding questions about RCMP procedures: “The public doesn’t have a right to know anything.”
The RCMP is subject only to a public complaints office that does not have authority to investigate police action causing death or serious injury. Even if Bush’s family were content to let the force investigate itself, which it is not, such attitudes from the police must be deeply troubling.
So Ontarians can be forgiven if they are a bit smug. The Ontario Special Investigations Unit (SIU), an independent civilian-led agency, would have carriage of such a case. And just recently, the province proposed to restore the independent police complaints system. Granted, it took 10 years to get us back to where we were before it was summarily disbanded, primarily in response to police agitation against the SIU — a surprising misalignment of purpose and result, but hey, the police vote was secured. Add to that the Ontario Civilian Commission on Polices Services and the police services board will start to seem a bit redundant.
Perhaps that explains the relative media silence surrounding the Toronto Police Services Board of late. In March, the board adopted its new Race and Ethnocultural Equity Policy amid surprisingly little public comment since it was in response to allegations of racial profiling by police. Or perhaps it was because it took nearly four years to adopt a policy that begins with “Discriminatory treatment of … the public … will not be tolerated.” No disciplinary offence, no immediate changes required, no consequences.
And that’s how police management like it. As an organization, a police agency will devote more of its resources to resisting change than to responding to it. Unlike high-tech companies that must change to survive, police agencies can rely on tradition and the service of a noble cause to get them past what they see as transitory criticism. And in the post 9/11 climate, it becomes easier to keep civilian overseers quiescent.
But even without that sense of insecurity, questioning police has its risks. . NDP MP Nathan Cullen, representing B.C.’s Skeena-Bulkley Valley riding, where Bush lived, may not have said it best, but he says it for every politician who ever sat on a police board: “… taking on police is … extremely dangerous … You can ruin your career.”
Every police wag-of-the-finger at a politician has major consequences — just ask Greg Sorbara or Ralph Goodale, finance ministers, no less. So where does that leave the average citizen?
Fifty years from now, police will no longer wear uniforms. Every citizen will take a turn in providing for the safety and security of the public. The rules governing their conduct while they serve the public will be the same as those that govern their private activities. And there will be no need for civilian oversight of policing because, as police leaders like to quote Sir Robert Peel, the police will truly be the public and the public will be the police.
We’re not there yet.
Lawyer Susan Eng was chair of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board from 1991 to 1995.
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