Police in Canada

The Real Story

by John Sewell

tagged: criminology

Description

What's going on with Canada's police? Once an institution that commanded respect and trust, the police are now widely regarded with skepticism and even suspicion. The dramatic death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of the RCMP at Vancouver's airport, accusations of racial profiling, and the resistance of police to independent civilian oversight have created the impression of organizations and individuals accountable to no one and above the law.

For the past twenty years, John Sewell has been an informed, independentminded observer of Canada's police. He was an early advocate of civilian review and has urged politicians to be as tough on police spending as they are on other government departments. His first book on this subject, published in 1985, was a pioneering outside analysis of police work. Now he offers readers a book built on his research, experience, and knowledge. Police in Canada gives readers an understanding of the role of police forces that goes far beyond public relations exercises and the portrayals shown in the media.

Addressing topics that include effective recruitment and training, police culture, accountability, surveillance, the use of tasers, racial profiling, complaints against the police, private policing, and governance, Sewell draws together the most up-to-date research in order to open the door on Canada's various police forces, including the RCMP.

His book provides the foundation for finding a new basis for police work in Canadian society.

About the Author

John Sewell

JOHN SEWELL served as an alderman on Toronto City Council during the 1970s and was mayor of Toronto from 1978 to 1980. He chaired the Metro Toronto Housing Authority from 1986 to 1988 and the Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario from 1991 to 1993. Sewell wrote an urban affairs column for The Globe and Mail from 1984 to 1986, currently writes for Now, a Toronto weekly, and is the author of Up Against City Hall, Police: Urban Policing in Canada, and the recently published The Shape of the City: Toronto Struggles with Modern Planning.

Excerpt

Preface
My interest in policing issues began when I was a member of Toronto City Council during the 1970s and early 1980s. When teaching at York University in the early 1980s, I was asked to devise a course on policing, and that led to my 1985 book, Police: Urban Policing in Canada.
As I turned to other activities my interest did not wane, but there was always a problem of finding a forum for expressing ideas about police. In the late 1990s, I helped establish the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition (TPAC). For more than a decade, this organization has met monthly to try to understand the policing world and to discuss police policies in a constructive manner. It hasn't always been easy. For instance, Toronto police chief Julian Fantino sued me for libel and slander for
what he said was a misinterpretation of a Supreme Court of Canada ruling about the way the Toronto police force carried out strip searches. I had to find money to retain a lawyer and agree to apologize for whatever I had said, but in that apology I stated that I would continue to press for a better strip-search policy to be used by Toronto police. (As noted in this book, we were not successful in reducing the number of strip searches carried out by Toronto police: almost one-third of all those police in canada arrested are strip searched, even though the Supreme Court stated that strip searching should be done rarely.) TPAC has produced a bimonthly electronic bulletin since 2002 (available at www.tpac.ca), and it traces many policing issues in Toronto over this eight-year period.
Then, in 2007, I taught a one-semester course in policing at Ryerson University. This book emerged as a result of that activity. In writing Police in Canada, I have been amazed at just how little has changed
since 1985. Some of the most interesting thinking about police activities occurred in the 1970s and 1980s (as one notes from the essays in David Bayley's recent book, What Works in Policing), and since then it seems most police forces have been closed to experimentation and external study. This makes the case for needed change all that more urgent.
I thank my friend Jim Lorimer for asking me to do this book, and for the editorial assistance of Diane Young at Lorimer's and Alison Reid. This book is dedicated to my long-term colleagues at TPAC, Anna, Richard, Harvey, and Else Marie, who have been strong friends in reviewing and acting on this most important of public policy issues over the years.

Contributor Notes

JOHN SEWELL is a former mayor of Toronto who was responsible for helping to establish the city's first independent police complaints commission and the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, an organization that encourages debate about police policy issues. For more than twenty years, he was an urban affairs columnist for The Globe and Mail, NOW, and Eye Weekly Magazine. He is also the author of eight previous books, including Mackenzie: A Political Biography of William Lyon Mackenzie (2002); Doors Open Toronto: Illuminating the City's Great Spaces (2002); The Shape of the City (1993), with foreword by Jane Jacobs, and The Shape of the Suburbs (2009). He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2005.

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The Real Story

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