Issues in Canadian policing

Post #295

1,000 words; 4 minutes to read.

Summary: A recent book discusses key issues in Canadian policing.

Policing is controversial work.  On the one hand we have three recent killings of police officers in the line of duty, events that get a huge amount of media coverage and remind us of the dangers of police work.  On the other hand, we get frequent stories of police misbehaviour.

A few years ago, Kent Roach, a professor of law at The University of Toronto, published ‘Canadian Policing: Why and How it Must Change’.  In the light of recent events, this book is more timely than ever.

Roach starts with a conclusion:

Canadian policing needs to change. It needs to become less violent and discriminatory, better governed, and more effective…

Roach believes that policing is a difficult, even an impossible, job, noting that the police are blamed ‘for enforcing laws they didn’t make in a social context they have little power to change’. They play

multiple and contradictory roles’ because they are asked to use violence when needed to enforce the law but we also ask them to serve as mediators, protectors, social workers, mentors and medics. But it is very difficult to play any one of those rules well- and it’s almost impossible to be good at them all.

Some facts about police (from 5 years ago): Canada has 137 police services compared to an astonishing 150,000 different police forces in the US and fewer than 50 in the UK.  There are about 70,000 police officers in Canada, with an average salary including over time pay of $118,000.  Canada’s total policing bill when the book was written was $15.7 billion, of which 80% went to salaries.  In 2019 about 8% of police officers were visible minorities, though in Toronto that figure was much higher at more than 25%. Public confidence in the police is high relative to other professions, but it is declining.

Effects on Marginalized Groups

A main point in Roach’s analysis is the effect of policing on poor and minority communities, where, in his view, it produces excessive surveillance ‘while at the same time failing to protect those groups and women from disproportionate violence.’

He recognizes that this is not just a policing issue, but policing is part of it.  ‘The police alone cannot reduce the disproportionate victimization of disadvantaged groups. At the same time, overly aggressive and unnecessary policing can erode trust between the police and the communities being policed… Poisoned relationships make it more difficult for the police to work effectively with communities to either previous prevent or solve crimes.’

In twenty or so years from 2002 there were 22 fatal encounters with police just in Winnipeg, of whom 14 victims were indigenous and only 5 were white. The website ‘Tracking Injustice’ lists nearly 900 deaths involving police and the use of force in Canada since 2000.  In 2020 Indigenous people were 5 percent of Canada’s population but accounted for 28% of murder victims. The extraordinarily high and growing proportion of Indigenous people in prison in Canada is well known.

Another challenging role of police is regarding mental health and homelessness. Roach cites 16,000 tickets being given to homeless people in Toronto in one year, of which only 10% were ever paid.  Similarly in Montreal, homeless people were 1% of the population but received more than 30% of all tickets issued by police. Mental health issues accounted for 3% of calls to Toronto police but 11% of all incidences of use of force by police, including 40% of use of tasers.

Are police law-abiding?

Another theme in the book is the violations of the law by police themselves.  The current controls over police through ‘special investigation units’ or the  courts seem ineffective in curbing incidences of police misconduct, even with the Charter.  For example a report from Western University [this is not in Roach’s book] found that officers from the five largest city police services in Ontario — namely Toronto, Peel, York Region, Durham Region and Ottawa — were found in court to violated the Charter of Rights more than 1,000 times in over 600 cases from 2015 to 2025, while many other instances went unreported.  .

There is little evidence that successful prosecutions, civil lawsuits, Police Complaints system, and disciplinary proceedings result in remedial measures that help officers avoid similar misconduct in the future… patterns of under governance have contributed to the lack of concrete changes, despite the repeated acts of police misconduct

The inefficiency of the current system of policing is another concern.  We are using highly paid officers for purposes often unrelated to public safety.  80% of calls to police are not about a crime; many concern mental health issues that police are not trained to handle.  40% of calls to the Ontario Provincial Police were about traffic; only 15% involved crimes.  Much of this could be handled by people with different training or backgrounds – and who do not need to be armed.

Culture of Policing

The culture of policing also creates a lot of stress for officers.  Police officers have unusually stressful lives, not only because of what they confront at work but also because they work in hierarchical and often frustrating organisations… recent meta study found ample evidence that police officers, especially those who have injured or killed someone, often develop post traumatic stress disorder. It also found evidence that police culture stigmatizes officers who received mental health assistance.

Relatedly, policing has turned out to be an unfriendly environment for women.  There have been many lawsuits by female (and minority) officers against police forces for discrimination.  The RCMP has paid out two very large settlements to women, huge numbers of whom complained about sexism in the workplace.  Similar reports have recently surfaced in Edmonton, Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto and other cities.

Roach concludes that there is not enough control of police by elected bodies and that police boards have also been unsuccessful in this regard.  He recommends decriminalization of some offences and simplification of the criminal code to reduce the workload of police.  Instead, for political reasons, Canada continues to create new criminal offences for things that were already criminal under some other provision of the Code.

The book has many other important points and suggestions.  In an era of ever-increasing police budgets while other services are cut, if offers a very different view, well informed by evidence, that recognize the complexity and difficulty of what police are asked to do.  An earlier post on this blog made similar points.

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