Chris Selley, Jonathan Goldsbie and Matt Gurney debate whether Police Chief Bill Blair can regain Torontonians’ trust, and how best to hold his political masters to account.
SELLEY: Several times over the past couple of years, I’ve been amazed and heartened by the number of people who’ve abandoned their knee-jerk support for the police. And each time, something else has come along and diminished those ranks even further. Some people seem to have actually switched camps from instinctively supporting police to instinctively being skeptical of them, based in no small part on the impression, right or wrong, that on G20 weekend, police stood by and did nothing while idiots smashed windows, and then used their actions as a pretense to arrest a thousand people who hadn’t done anything. In this environment, the pressure is mounting steadily on Police Chief Bill Blair, who, for all his protestations of wanting to get to the bottom of things, doesn’t seem to really understand, and certainly doesn’t reflect, the level of anger that’s out there. So, a simple question: Should Chief Blair offer to resign? Should he be relieved of his duties? Or can he learn from this and regain the public’s trust?
GURNEY: As someone who once would have freely admitted to being a reflexive cop backer, I have to agree with Chris that this hasn’t been a good time for the police. To directly take on the issue of whether or not Blair should resign, though, I can’t say I’m convinced he should. If there is a case to be made that he should fall on his sword, I think it’s because of the deception over the extent of the five-metre law, which absolutely lands squarely in his lap, rather than the excesses of the officers under his command. There’s no reason to assume that any fewer batons would have been swung by officers under the command of Chiefs Gurney, Selley or Goldsbie. But where Blair has been failing since then has been in reacting to the PR disaster that the media, mostly in the form of Rosie DiManno, has been inflicting on the Service. Obviously the Chief needs to defend his organization, but that goes beyond simply defending it from zingers in the press. He has to defend its interests, and by not dealing with the issue of rogue officers harshly, quickly and publicly, Blair has probably set the Service up for a shellacking it could have otherwise avoided.
GOLDSBIE: In a column that Chris and I wrote on the Sunday afternoon of the G20 weekend, I quite explicitly and passionately called on Chief Bill Blair to resign or, failing that, to lose his job in disgrace. And while I still believe that either of those things would be entirely appropriate given how deeply he has lost the public’s confidence, I am increasingly reluctant to openly advocate for them. Given the significant imminent turnover of members on the Toronto Police Services Board (which is responsible for hiring and firing the Chief), there is even more uncertainty than usual regarding what type of commander his successor might be. The process of finding a new chief is likely to become excessively politicized, and I’m concerned that rhetoric (rather than sound policy, vision or strategy) may carry the day. Just because Blair was infinitely superior to his own predecessor does not mean he is excused from responsibility for what happened under his command or for his ensuing months of foot dragging. But, at this point, I am willing to concede that pushing for his resignation is not far removed from pushing our luck.
GURNEY: To that point, the main problem we’re facing, when you boil it down to the core of the issue, is whether or not the police (and their political masters) consider themselves servants of the people or their own force/party/union. If Blair loses his head right now, when the TPS is under seige, whomever replaces him (I know of no one exactly waiting in the wings that we could turn to as the default choice) is going to have to immediately go through a whole period of chest thumping and outreach to the officers under his command to establish trust with the force that he’ll end up commanding long after the current political issue passes. We’d end up with someone whose future ability to command the force would essentially hinge on his refusal to spank it and send it to bed without any dinner in the short term. I don’t really see any benefit to that. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of Blair’s continued command, but that’s good, because I’m not out to endorse him. In the abstract, I’d probably prefer to see him gone. I just can’t imagine a way to accomplish that that improves matters, and most scenarios I can foresee would leave us worse off without him.
SELLEY: Some excellent points there. I’d add that I’ve never understood the value of these symbolic offers to resign from public figures. Surely saying “I’m sorry for [INSERT DEBACLE HERE] and pledge to do better and it’s up to my bosses whether or not I stay” is just as good. That said, much of what’s gone wrong is institutional rather than personally related to Blair’s leadership. Officers have exercised their right not to talk to the SIU. I think it’d be nice if Blair seemed angry about that … but hey, rights are rights. Same goes with his stated desire to see the wrongdoing officers punished. The punishments are, in many cases, laughable — certainly far short of what the public demands in the current environment. So Blair can advocate fixing these problems, but ultimately they’re not his to fix, and they’d remain in place no matter who took over from him. My instinct right now is to stand pat with Blair and keep up the pressure on him, and on the people who can fix these institutional shortcomings. It’s working so far, albeit slowly.
GOLDSBIE: Why does it seem like the media is the only institution that ever manages to hold the police in this city to a meaningful standard of accountability? It shouldn’t have taken consecutive days of Blair-baiting front pages for the police Chief to accept some responsibility for the conduct of his force and his own role in preserving trust in it. But then that’s often been the way that police reforms have come about in Toronto — with the media conducting investigations into troubles, both isolated and systemic, and then hammering away until there is at least some token gesture of improvement. While the press is never better than when it is doing this, surely it should not feel alone in the crusade. The G20 aftermath has made me question whether the official oversight bodies (the Police Services Board, the Special Investigations Unit, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, and so on) have their own institutional issues that prevent them from serving as an adequate check on police power. I am encouraged by the fact that — according to the Globe — the Ontario Ombudsman is once again carrying out a comprehensive probe into the effectiveness of the SIU. And, although such a change might come with complications of its own, I would also not object to the Ombudsman’s legal jurisdiction being broadened to include the police.
SELLEY: A fine idea in principle, although another self-aggrandizing press conference from André Marin might be enough to turn public opinion back in favour of the police.
GURNEY: There’s no doubt the system of watching the watchers is broken (Thank you, Ottawa police, for making that especially clear recently). I suspect Marin is busy enough with the rest of the province to take on the added burden, though. A revamped, stronger SIU is the better bet.
GOLDSBIE: And, hey, how about a full public inquiry? Just because our elected leaders are hesitant to subject themselves to such scrutiny doesn’t mean we can’t embarrass them into it the same way we did with Chief Blair.
Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/12/12/posted-toronto-political-panel-after-g20-can-we-trust-police-chief-bill-blair-again/#ixzz183kebjNI
