Jewish Advisory to Toronto Police Services Board
We are in a municipal election year in Ontario. Our municipal officials and city councillors will be doing their best to put a good face on their work before going to the polls this fall, but I find the proposed Toronto Police Service Board consultations with the Jewish community to be highly questionable.
As reported in the Canadian Jewish News, Toronto’s Police Services Board and its chair, Toronto City Councillor Shelley Carroll have recently announced the formation of a Jewish Community Advisory Table to pursue short-term governance consultations with Toronto’s Jewish community, likely prior to the fall municipal election.
Their terms of reference have been explicit in seeking Jewish citizens with ‘board level’ experience and prohibiting them from explicit comment on levels of service of the Toronto Police or on specific incidents of antisemitic hate crimes and harassment. So, what’s the point of these consultations?
https://thecjn.ca/news/toronto-police-services-board-to-start-jewish-community-advisory-group/
It should be noted that we in the Jewish community like any community in Toronto are often simultaneously dependent on police for our community safety and considerably less than satisfied with the police responses we have received to date.
Some of the response statements including that from B’nai Brith Canada’s Director of Research and Advocacy have made that point very diplomatically. Police Service Boards tend to be in-house ‘rubber stamps’ and rarely critical of police.
B’nai Brith works closely with law enforcement in documenting and reporting hate crimes (now at unprecedented levels) and their reports of anti-semitic incidents are relied upon internationally by governments and law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Many Jewish residents of Toronto remain alarmed at the extent to which lawless mobs of anti-Israel protestors have been allowed to run rampant in our streets and neighbourhoods, harassing and threatening local residents, and vandalizing properties with impunity.
In response, rather than concerted law enforcement and investigation of crimes, Jewish citizens often receive regular PR statements from Toronto Police attempting to convince them that not all offensive speech crosses the line into hate speech, as if we were undereducated in law.
This same statement was issued recently by a Toronto Police spokesperson following the discovery of two incidents of antisemitic graffiti in a municipal bus shelter calling for the murder of rabbis and Jews. It seems to be their standard line. If this is not hate speech inciting violence to Jews, what is?
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/antisemitic-graffiti-calls-for-death-of-jews-toronto
Toronto Police have expanded their hate crimes units and policed over 800 anti-Israel protests (largely in separating protest contingents) and have made multiple arrests since the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, 2023. The police express sympathy with the Jewish community while failing to protect it adequately. They claim that many of the charges laid are quashed by Crown Attorneys (prosecutors) and court personnel and judges.
I find reports in the Jewish press and statements by our leading Jewish organizations to be overly deferential to police and elected officials and rather naive to their attempted political co-opting in favour of Toronto Police and the Police Services Board and municipal city councillors.
This is little more than a PR exercise, in my view, and could potentially forestall future legal actions against Toronto Police for underserving Toronto’s Jewish community. A careful legal statement should be developed by any Jewish participants in this ‘Advisory Table’ that their participation is motivated by the desire to improve Jewish community safety and Toronto Police policy responses, but will not forestall any future legal actions in future against Toronto Police, the Toronto Police Services Board, and the City of Toronto.
Once again, our uptown Jewish community seems to be playing the role of ‘sha shtil shtadlanut’. It is no ‘honor’ to be asked to participate in such an Advisory Table. This development should be regarded as a statement by the Police Services Board of an urgent need of advice from the Jewish community to improve police response to escalating and unprecedented anti-semitic hate crimes and harassment. But the Jewish community must find the courage to hold them accountable.
This is not a high protocol tea party and cultural exchange. Why hasn’t the Police Services Board exercised greater oversight over the Toronto Police previously? The Jewish public’s ‘consent’ to these consultation processes and their docile and naive participation in them is being engineered and constrained.
I have participated previously in such consultations with Toronto’s Police Service Board over 20 years ago during my term as a volunteer member of the Canadian Jewish Congress-Ontario Region and its Community Safety Committee. It was a waste of time. Hate crimes continued to increase.
On the other hand, this may be an opportunity to have some input into Toronto Police Service Board advisory and governance processes.
The Toronto Police have recently been widely criticized for under-enforcing existing laws in ways we have rarely seen in my experiential memory. Ontario’s Solicitor General Michael Kerzner (Member of Provincial Parliament for the York Centre district experiencing the bulk of intimidating anti-Israel protests) had to issue a public letter to the Toronto Police Chief stressing the importance of enforcing existing laws and using allocated resources to this effect.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/solicitor-general-urges-tps-chief-board-chair-to-take-action-on-anti-israel-mobs
https://thecjn.ca/news/ontarios-solicitor-general-publicly-calls-out-toronto-police-handling-of-unacceptable-anti-israel-protests/
The federal Member of Parliament for York Centre, Roman Baber, was similarly forced to issue a public letter demanding the enforcement of existing laws, including those prohibiting unlawful assemblies, incitement to mischief, intimidation from lawful purpose, and criminal harassment. Elected officials cannot interfere directly in specific police investigations, but they can call for the general enforcement of laws in the interest of community safety.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/toronto-jews-not-safe-mp-letter-to-mayor-top-cop
Toronto’s Police Service has been under increasing scrutiny, even attempting to shut down discussions of its practices by local media who were investigating an in-house Toronto Police ‘lawyer’ cited by leftist Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow in media interviews with Toronto newstalk radio CFRB 1010, and related comments by Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw in a follow up interview.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-mayor-police-chief-on-different-pages-about-consulting-cop-lawyer
Our Toronto Police Service and all Ontario police services are currently under investigation by the Ontario Inspector General of Police (a non-elected position) for a wide-ranging and troubling corruption scandal involving organized crime and leading to the suspension and arrests of eight police officers.
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/inspector-general-to-decide-project-south-probe
Toronto Police have been criticized for attempting to investigate themselves and for failing to apologize to the public for their shortcomings. Previous Toronto Police Chiefs have been forced to resign for far less, but our elected officials seem to be mesmerized by Chief Demkiw. Why?
https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/few-bad-apples-on-toronto-police-to-probing-every-department-why
There is something very wrong and very broken in our law enforcement in Ontario and it is posing real dangers to our vulnerable Jewish community, now facing unprecedented rates of hate crimes and lawless harassment.
The question is who if anyone in our Jewish community will step up and speak out courageously about it, or will they just participate in yet another PR exercise by Toronto City Councillor Shelley Carroll, the Toronto Police Services Board, and the Toronto Police Services. Deference to protocol will not protect us. Wisdom might.