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Toronto Police Association: a threat to democracy
(This article is from the Feb. 15-29/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
PV Ontario Bureau
THE TORONTO POLICE ASSOCIATION has upped the ante in its campaign to free itself of civilian controls.
In early January, the Police Association sued Liberal MP Judy Sgro for her comments while still a Toronto City Councillor and member of the Toronto Police Services Board. The Police Association had engineered a campaign of harassment against her, Sgro said, because of her outspoken criticism of the P.A.'s "bullying" tactics during her two years on the Board.
Having been advised by US police groups that the way to increase its control was to "bring down" a councillor or mayor, the P.A. is flexing its muscles. As PV goes to press, the Association is in court with a newer suit against Toronto City Council and the Police Services Board. This suit argues that the P.A. has every right to ignore both a directive from Police Chief David Boothby, and a by-law passed by the Board prohibiting the Association from continuing its "Operation True Blue" fund-raising campaign.
The telemarketing campaign, which the Association has temporarily suspended, involved calls to every household in Toronto with the offer of gold ($100), silver ($50) and bronze ($25) car decals in exchange for contributions to the P.A.'s political action fund.
That fund will be used to support candidates, and between elections, elected Councillors, MPPs and MPs who are "pro-police." It will also target candidates and councillors, as well as other individuals and organizations who (like Sgro) are seen as "enemies" of the police.
Taking a leaf from the Los Angeles Police Association, the Toronto P.A. intends to use surveillance, and to dig into individuals' tax returns and health information to find "dirt" to smear their critics.
On CBC's Fifth Estate in January, P.A. President Craig Bromell said, "I think if you found somebody who is an enemy of the police, we don't want him around. So you try and get him kicked out of office. Pretty simple... All the other loudmouths, they're going to keep their mouths shut... (We're) going to target our enemies."
"You can call me a bully," Bromell said in the interview. Asked if the smear campaign is intimidation, he replied, "You can call it that."
Asked at a media scrum if the P.A.'s defiance of Chief Boothby's order to stop the campaign isn't illegal, Bromell said, "He doesn't have any power over us."
Even many police boosters and rank and file officers are appalled and frightened by the Association's plans. Police Board vice chair and well-known Tory Jeff Lyons, for example, has had his legal firm swept for bugging devices.
In another Fifth Estate program, aired Feb. 2, Deputy Police Chief Bob Kerr said he was "afraid" of the P.A.'s campaign. Kerr said he had been told by an officer that the Association was planning to release damaging information about him, unless he tendered his resignation or retirement by the end of March.
Boothby, who announced his own early retirement last fall, is said to have been pushed out by the P.A. and the Harris Tories. Responding to Kerr's televised statements, Boothby said that everyone was vulnerable to that kind of digging and dirt. He announced that an internal investigation into the matter would start immediately.
Radio talk shows and the letters pages in Toronto's four daily newspapers show mass public opposition, growing anger, and not least, fear. If City Council has no control over the cops, who does?
With Julian Fantino ready to take over as the new Police Chief on March 1, the answer is not an easy one for many. In the most diverse city in the world, where a majority of citizens are not white, anglo-saxon, or Protestant, even the question is frightening.
<Headline 18 helv>Fantino and Bromell: darlings of the far right
<Body text> Fantino is the darling of right-wing law-and-order advocates across the country, and the Harris Tories in the first place. His ascension to Toronto Police Chief is shrouded in secrecy. Backroom deals, including a meeting and an endorsement from Craig Bromell, propelled Fantino from non-candidate to Chief in a matter of days.
Fantino is a former Toronto officer who left to head the police force in London, Ontario, and then York Region. While in London, Fantino was sharply criticized for his dealings with the gay and lesbian community, and in York Region for receiving a secret corporate donation of $750,000 to purchase police helicopters. (His predecessor, Bryan Cousineau, was forced into retirement after receiving similar secret donations from Magna International.)
Shortly after Fantino's appointment, the Toronto Police asked for three new helicopters.
Bromell and the P.A. think they can wait out the current furore. It's a matter of days before Boothby is out and Fantino is in. Meantime, the Premier says it's a "local matter," and Solicitor General David Tsubouchi is busy arranging more secret meetings between the Police Association and Norm Gardner, the gun-toting Chair of the Police Services Board, without the knowledge or approval of the Board.
The current confrontation is rooted in the changes to the provincial Police Services Act passed in 1998. Prior to the changes, police in Ontario were forbidden to involve themselves in politics or political action of any kind. Now they can even run for office.
This is what Bromell and the P.A. are hanging their hats on, claiming the changed legislation makes their action legal. And they may be right.
<Headline 18 helv>"Keep the cops out of politics"
<Body text> Communist Party Labour Secretary Liz Rowley said the legislation should be immediately repealed, and that police forces should be forbidden from all involvement in politics and political action.
"The police are a para-military organization. They are armed, and have extraordinary powers to arrest, detain, search, and to use force. In Canada at least, they exist to enforce laws enacted by elected civilian - not military - governments. The Police are not `participants' in the political process. They take orders. Their job is to enforce the law. The involvement in politics of armed, special purpose bodies - the police - is a threat to democracy, and objectively opens the door to a police state," said Rowley. "Civilian control is being sharply challenged by the Police Association, and this is the guts of the matter in Toronto.
"The Police Association is being covertly cheered on by the Harris government who want a law and order agenda in Ontario. The Association has also been encouraged by several Toronto Councils which have, over the last decade, actively contributed to the weakening of the Police Services Board. The dumping of Arnold Minors, Susan Eng, and others, predisposed the election of police booster Norm Gardner as Board Chair, and created the climate which actively encouraged the challenges from the Association that go back to the 1995 wildcat strike at 51 Division, led by Bromell and his associates, that propelled them to leadership of the Police Association in 1997," she said.
The wildcat was Bromell's reaction to discipline meted out to him and eight other officers at 51 Division, for the brutal "take-down" of a City TV photo-journalist whose "crime" was to be young and black.
Bromell also organized an illegal job action in 1996 after he and eight others from 51 Division were disciplined. The officers were alleged to have kidnapped a man from the Regent Street police station and beaten him at Cherry Beach. The P.A. challenged the discipline and the nine were eventually cleared. The Association is demanding that the Board pay their $112,687 legal bill.
"This is dangerous stuff," Rowley said, noting that what happens in Toronto may set the standard for civilian control over police across Canada.
The Calgary Police Association has already stated it will send representatives to meet with the Toronto P.A. this spring, to discuss its own political action plans and fund-raising. Others are developing their own plans.
City Councillor and Police Board member Olivia Chow has been outspoken in her opposition. "They are breaking the law," she said.
Chow and Lyons have tried to put some spine into the Board, described as "in tatters" from its series of capitulations to the Police Association. The two sought an injunction against the True Blue campaign, when others on the Board had bowed to pressure from the Mayor to let him "talk" to Bromell for a week.
But many on Council and on the Board are quiet, afraid of the Police Association, as shown by their vote to authorize spending for a sweep of all their offices, homes and cars for bugs. Their unanimous vote to create a special by-law outlawing the True Blue campaign was also too little, too late.
On Feb. 3, the P.A. backed off the Operation True Blue campaign, but not its other plans. "We can get involved in politics if we want," said Bromell at a news conference that day.
His statement ensures a major confrontation over civilian control of the police. It also means rough water ahead for the labour and democratic movements who will no doubt spearhead the fight, since they will be the first targets of a police force out of civilian control.
The Urban Alliance on Race Relations and the Chinese Canadian National Council are in the forefront of those demanding immediate action to restore civilian control. The Toronto Labour Council has also adopted a sharp statement.
The battle lines are already forming.
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