Chief to apologize to black community as Toronto police are about to release race-based data: sources

Toronto Police Chief James Rammer plans to apologize to the black community in the city, CBC News has learned, as forces prepare to pull back the curtain on data that will reveal the extent to which race has played a role in the use of force and search bands.

Two sources familiar with the situation said Ramer, Toronto’s interim chief, would make a formal apology at a news conference Wednesday morning.

Ramer’s apology comes as the service prepares to uncover overrepresentation of specific communities in the police force, nearly three years after first receiving a mandate from the Ontario government to document race-based data in violent incidents.

The data collection began amid widespread demonstrations against police brutality sparked in the United States by the assassination of George Floyd by a white police officer and in that city, when questions arose about the role the race may have played in the death of Regis Korczynski-Packet – A young black woman who fell to her death from a balcony in Toronto after her family called 911 for help.

The data, some of which was shared with the media before the announcement, remains under embargo until 10:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

The goal of “eliminating systemic racism”

Information on the use of force was collected in accordance with the Toronto Police Data Collection Policy, based on race, in order to “identify, measure and ultimately eliminate systemic racism,” a statement from the force said.

The data collection policy follows a key recommendation from a broad interim report on race and police for 2018 by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC). The report found that a black man in Toronto was nearly 20 times more likely than a white man to be shot and killed by police.

This came after a 2019 report by the Court of Appeal, Michael Tulok, on random street checks, in which a Ontario judge said the practice only generated “low-quality intelligence” and expropriates certain communities from the police.

After being given a mandate to collect race-based data on the use of force, the forces say they have “gone a step further than expected” and have also committed to collecting race-based data on band searches. Data collection began in January 2020.