Toronto police have unveiled a review claiming harassment and discrimination run rampant in the force. .“The service has been focused on police reform and being responsive to our communities, and also to our members,” said Toronto police chief James Ramer in a Wednesday press release. .“That work includes understanding and reforming our own workplace, and being frank about the challenges some of our members have experienced at work.” .Toronto police retained Deloitte to conduct this review. Members were able to provide their concerns through interviews, focus groups, and confidential surveys issued to 7,818 members in 2020. .The report said 60% of the 908 respondents experienced or witnessed harassment or discrimination within the Toronto police in the last five years. .Toronto police employees who spoke with Deloitte said they believe the organization is led by white males. These employees said this lack of diversity within leadership reinforces the status quo, with leaders promoting people who look like them. .The members said they felt leadership does not receive sufficient training to address harassment and discrimination. According to the report, members experiencing harassment and discrimination felt they had to file a formal complaint or endure the behaviour. .Deloitte said almost all employees it spoke with claimed they perceived a history of gender-based discrimination within the force. The severity of the issues described range from inappropriate jokes to sexual assault. .In the review, members said they feel there is a stigma around mental health. They said employees who raise concerns over their mental health believe it could lead to harassment, discrimination, exclusion, and prevent career advancement. .Employees said they do not trust the complaints process, citing biased investigations and a perceived lack of accountability. .The press release said Toronto police have enacted various measures to address concerns brought up in the review. These measures include enhanced training, a redesigned complaints process, and hiring two workplace dispute resolutions specialists. .“The recommendations speak to the need to foster a culture that is based on equity, diversity and respect — a goal we have been working diligently towards, and which is a work in progress,” said Ramer. .“We see the Deloitte report both as an endorsement of our ongoing work, and as an obligation to push forward.”.This announcement comes around the same time Toronto police published race-based data it had been collecting, which came from officers’ perceptions of people’s races in use-of-force incidents and strip searches in 2020. .“The results have confirmed what, for many decades, racialized communities — particularly the black and indigenous communities — have been telling us; they are disproportionately over-policed,” said Ramer. .“This data demonstrates the unfortunate realities of those experiences.”
