Despite the fact that the last show in Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s 2012/2013 season is titled Of a Monstrous Child: A Gaga Musical, Lady Gaga herself takes a secondary role. There are no homages to raw-meat dresses and gold-plated wheelchairs here. Instead, writer and director Alistair Newton uses the House of Gaga as a pathway into the history of the notable performance-art stars that came before her in the pantheon of queer iconography, and how she is and isn’t a construct of all of them put together.

It’s entirely possible that an early work by the next Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg will screen on Wednesday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. With the 2013 Student Film Showcase featuring the best from post-secondary schools around the country and the Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase kicking off the evening with Toronto-area high-school students’ films, the night will be a coming-out party for a new crop of talent. Judging by the polished creativity of some of the entries, it’s safe to say that young people are more prepared than ever to start telling stories on film from an early age.

As has been widely reported, last week a TTC bus was requested by police to pick up the players of the Don Bosco football team—whose coach, famously, is Mayor Rob Ford. It’s not entirely clear why officers judged the special-order bus to be necessary: various spokespeople have alluded to tensions between players at the game, and also to inclement weather.

It is not, says the TTC, unusual for various emergency services to ask the transit provider for what is known as a “shelter bus.” What is less common is unloading passengers from a bus already on the road to fulfill such a request, as happened here—a situation considerably complicated by the fact that when a bus didn’t arrive, Ford called TTC CEO Andy Byford to inquire about its whereabouts.

Below is the full text of a just-released TTC statement on the incident, summarizing remarks they have already made and attempting to allay concerns that the mayor unduly influenced operational decisions.

Last Thursday, November 1, the Toronto Transit Commission’s Transit Control Centre received a call from the Toronto Police Service requesting a shelter bus. The TTC took immediate action to accommodate the request, dispatching an in-service bus from the 36 Finch West bus route. The bus operator was having difficulty finding the location it was asked to attend. After further inquiries by police to the control centre about the whereabouts of the bus, staff dispatched a second bus, this one from the 46 Martin Grove route, also in service. Eventually, the 36 Finch West bus operator found the school and the 46 Martin Grove bus was returned to service.

At no time did TTC CEO Andy Byford order a second bus or give direction to TTC staff. And at no time were TTC frontline personnel aware of why a shelter bus was required, a request the TTC receives, on average twice a week, from police and Toronto Fire. Typically, the TTC tries to send shelter buses from a terminal location (subway station) or bus garage, minimizing the impact on customers. Given the urgency of the police request, operations personnel at the TTC made the decision to utilize buses from nearby routes to meet the request as quickly as possible.

Since this incident, a number of questions about the need for a shelter bus on this occasion have arisen, as well as the reasons why fare-paying customers were displaced from two in-service buses to accommodate the request.

Below is the text of an email sent by Mr. Byford to all TTC Commissioners on the morning of Nov. 3 in response to questions from them about this incident, including whether or not TTC policies and protocols should be changed and/or reviewed.

TTC staff will report to the Commission, and the public, once it determines whether its protocols need to change or if they require strengthening. The TTC will not be providing further comment on this matter until that time.

-30-

Commissioners,

I will dig out the policy and, if you would like, make a proposal to strengthen it.

(Legitimate) requests come in at any time, often at extreme times of the day. As such, operational staff are best placed to handle them. More senior (TTC staff) oversight/approval may be needed though.

The most unfortunate thing about this episode is the damage done to our reputation after more than a year of careful, painstaking steps to improve it. I am not happy about that and I am certainly not happy that fare paying customers were inconvenienced under these circumstances.

For the record: I had no idea that two buses were used nor that customers were inconvenienced.

Rest assured that I am following this up with TPS and the Mayor’s Office.

Regards

Andy

Andy Byford
Chief Executive Officer

A rally held at Christie Pits earlier this month.

The Toronto Police Service announced this morning that an arrest has been made in connection with a string of sexual assaults that took place in the Christie Pits neighbourhood over the past two months. Late Saturday night, immediately after an assault near Bloor and Roxton, officers apprehended a 15-year-old male, who cannot be identified further due to Young Offender legislation.

The assaults in question took place between August 16 and October 20, and struck fear into the heart of a community that many generally thought of as safe. In all the reported assaults, women walking alone in the neighbourhood were approached and assaulted from behind, before the assailant fled. The youth arrested on Saturday has been charged with 14 counts of sexual assault and two counts of criminal harassment. (Police today spoke of notifying 16 victims in total, prior to making today’s public announcement, so it appears that as things currently stand they have laid one charge per assault.)

Staff Inspector Mary Lee Metcalfe, of the police sex crimes unit, opened her remarks today by acknowledging “the courage of our complainants and witnesses to bring forward information” as well as thanking the community for its engagement, and for “peaceful assemblies to ensure the issue was always in the forefront” of public awareness.

Many in the public have been wondering why the police have so far declined to provide more details about the exact nature of the assaults. Police Chief Bill Blair maintained that position today, however, saying only that “the offenses here were very serious; they caused a tremendous amount of fear,” but declining to discuss the particulars. He did say that the assailant was not well-known to his victims. Blair also added that “we do have people in our organization who put themselves in harm’s way”—this leaving reporters to wonder (though Blair wouldn’t answer the questions about this) whether a female officer had gone undercover in the course of the investigation and might be Saturday night’s victim.

Blair said he hopes women “can be reassured” by the arrest and the actions of the police in handling this case.

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair after the police board meeting in May.

Today, the Honourable John W. Morden will present the Independent Civilian Review Into Matters Relating To The G20 Summit’s official report [PDF] to the Toronto Police Services Board. Like the Office of the Independent Police Review Director’s report before it, it is unsurprisingly critical of the various governments and authorities planning for and response to the G20 summit and what went on while that was happening. Also like the OIPRD report, this report is extremely long (weighing in at a hefty 425 pages).

However, it is not duplicative; it surveys terrain the previous report didn’t address in full.

This report is much more a study of how the various governments and agencies involved with G20 security issues prepared for and acted during the G20 on a procedural level, rather than on what actually happened. Morden accordingly spends little time discussing, for example, excessive force used against protestors, as to his mind this is not a failure of procedure so much as it is an operational failure to abide by procedure, and not within his mandate of review. (He does express the need for the Board to prepare an in-depth policy for crowd control at major events, and suggests that the G20 summit could serve in many ways as an instructional lesson.)

Perhaps reflecting the fact that this report was always going to be presented to the Toronto Police Board, it focuses a great deal on the Board itself, which it portrays repeatedly as having had its powers of oversight usurped by other entities: the federal government and the Toronto Police Service lead the way in these areas. The report notes that the Board was not nearly proactive enough in attempting to properly assert its powers of oversight, failing to properly request information about (deep breath): the legal framework for policing the G20 summit; the requests the TPS made for additional policing powers (and the responses to those powers); the role and function of the Integrated Security Unit and how Toronto police would work within it; how the TPS would police the city during the G20; the command and control structure for security forces during the summit and how Toronto police would work within that; training provided to officers; and what authority the Board had over visiting police officers from other cities—among other topics. In fairness, the report also notes that the Board was stonewalled, generally deprived of information, and even outright intimidated by those it questioned.

The report spends approximately 20 pages discussing the training of police for the G20. Morden again calls out the Board for failing to be properly involved, but his primary criticism here is that the training methods used—a combination of online training modules and some in-person instruction, with the emphasis on the former—were clearly not sufficient and that, even though there was a time-crunch (regarding which, incidentally, he is extremely critical of Stephen Harper’s federal government for not nearly providing enough notice to city and provincial authorities about the G20 being here in the first place), some classroom instruction could have gone a long way towards better preparing police for the G20.

As previously mentioned, Morden only briefly discusses police interactions with civilians during the G20; however, as he is discussing procedural and planning issues with the G20, he concludes the report with harsh criticism of the Prisoner Processing Centre, covering many of the operational failures that the OIPRD report did, but looking at them primarily from a planning perspective, since in Morden’s view, it was the planning failures behind the PPC that made it so galling. He suggests that proper preparation could have been taken with respect to processing youths and adults together, availability of counsel, suitability of full-body strip searches, etc., and lessened all of these failures dramatically. (This writer is not sure that he agrees with that conclusion, but it is a fair position to take.) Morden also strongly recommends that the board amend existing policies to ensure that in the future, youth prisoners are processed in accordance with existing youth justice laws, and that transgender and transsexual prisoners be taken into account with respect to separately gendered detention areas.

Simply put: this is not a report for people looking for further condemnation of the police abuses during the G20. It is a wonkish policy document that acknowledges those failure and then asks, in detail, how those failures came to be. That makes it a worthwhile but dry read.

Photo by Giordano Ciampini.

The gutted remains of a heritage building after a six-alarm fire at the site, formerly the location of the Empress Hotel.

Earlier today, Toronto Police Service announced the arrest of a suspect in two downtown arsons, including one that gutted a heritage building at 335 Yonge Street in January 2011.

Police at 51 Division told media this afternoon that they arrested 53-year-old Stewart Poirier of Toronto after he failed to check in with his probation officer on Friday. A combination of witness statements and what they would only call “other evidence” led them to charge Poirier with both the Yonge Street blaze and another fire last week at 123 Sackville Street, a Toronto Community Housing building where Poirier lived. Poirier was on probation after being convicted of arson in April 2011, for setting a fire at the Inglewood Arms Hotel on Jarvis Street.

In addition to two counts of arson and probation violations, Poirier was also charged with two counts of mischief endangering life and one count of attempted murder in relation to the Sackville Street fire.

Police wouldn’t speculate as to motive, nor would they say whether or not Poirier had any connection to the Lalani Group, who wanted to redevelop the site at Yonge and Gould, once the site of the Empress Hotel.

They did, however, say that both arsons showed evidence of careful planning, and that police and fire marshals were investigating Poirier’s involvement in other incidents around the city.

“We are looking into other previous occurrences in our division and around the downtown core,” said Inspector Gary Meissner. “We do have reason to believe there will be other charges laid.”

Officers at College and Yonge on June 24, 2010.

Today was the first day of tribunals for a selection of officers charged under the Police Services Act with offences committed during the 2010 G20 summit.

None of the officers (Constables Ryan Simpson, Donald Stratton, Jason Crawford, Michael Kirpoff, Michael Martinez, and Alan Li) were present for proceedings, which turned out to be simple adjournments, as the Toronto Police Service is currently in the process of securing outside counsel for these and other G20-related cases. The officers, all charged with unlawful or unnecessary exercise of authority, are due back before the tribunal on September 18. The tribunal session was overseen by Superintendent Robin Breen, after Police Chief Bill Blair excused himself from the hearings last month.

Kevin Masterman, a spokesperson for the police, assured us that this wasn’t an instance of kicking the can down the road but a routine development: “We’re still early in the process, much like a court. They’re getting the prosecution ready, getting the defence ready—that’s typical of this process.”

He added: “At this point the Service is in the process of identifying a judge and prosecutors to preside over these prosecutions, likely in the fall.”

In addition to the six constables listed above, four other officers are so far charged with offences under the Police Services Act: Blair Begbie, Vincent Wong, Glenn Weddell, and Babak Andalib-Goortani. Begbie and Wong, charged with unlawful or unnecessary arrest, are scheduled to appear before the tribunal on July 24; they are also likely to have their cases adjourned to September 18. Weddell and Andalib-Goortani, both charged with using unnecessary force in incidents that took place near Queen’s Park, are having their appearances held pending the outcome of criminal prosecutions.

A total of 28 officers and four senior officers will eventually face charges under the Police Services Act; a complete list of names and charges has yet to be released.

The Antiheroes were set to open tonight’s hip-hop showcase.

The SmashMouth Entertainment showcase that was supposed to take place tonight at The Rivoli has been cancelled after the Toronto Police Service contacted bar management this morning with security concerns. The event was supposed to be one of the larger hip-hop bills at this year’s NXNE festival, set to feature 10 different acts from New York, Washington, DC and Vancouver, as well as several locals.

A manager at the bar, who would only give his name as Todd, confirmed that members of TPS’ Guns and Gangs Unit had visited the bar earlier in the day.

“Police did come in this morning, and I wasn’t here at the time, but they approached us with some security concerns, and between the police, us and the folks at North by Northeast, we decided that it was best if we cancelled the show altogether,” he said.

Staff Sergeant Winston Bennett, of 52 Division, confirmed that police did approach the venue with concerns about security, but that the final decision to cancel the show lay with the bar. He was unable to provide any further details.

“The police don’t cancel shows,” he said.

The promoter placed the following message on its Facebook page late this afternoon:

Due to unforeseen circumstances, and at the request of the Toronto Police and the Toronto Gang Unit, we regret to announce that our NXNE “SmashMouth Mentality” showcase scheduled for June 13 at Rivoli has been cancelled. For any inquiries regarding this matter please direct all messages to Brenden Hewko of SmashMouth Entertainment – Brenden@SmashMouthEnt.com

The announcement disappointed fans and artists alike.

“I kind of have half a mind to, I don’t know, write letters about it or something,” said Roshin, an MC with local group Notes to Self. Notes was scheduled to take the stage at 10:50 p.m. “It sucks, because it’s the only big rap show other than Yonge-Dundas.”

He’s also confused by the police’s reasoning.

“Half the acts aren’t from Toronto, and the ones that are play all the time,” he said.

More details will be posted as they become available, but in the mean time, here’s some terrifying, gang-related music.

Police superintentent Mark Saunders takes notes during a meeting on police carding and racial profiling.

The Toronto Police Service’s practice of “carding”—that is, documenting contact with residents—is facing renewed criticism from frustrated community groups and individuals. Participants at a Weston-Mount Dennis community meeting, organized by the York Youth Coalition, expressed outrage (but not surprise) at recent reports that, even as crime in the priority-designated neighboorhood is in decline, complaints of ongoing police harrasment and racial profiling are the norm.

Lekan Olawoye, executive director of the For Youth Initiative, cited the community’s desire for more “critical, holistic policing,” and said that police are failing to connect with residents because of “a lack of an authentic relationship with the community and young people.” Olawoye related his own experiences being stopped and questioned as a teenager in Rexdale, saying that even as an adult, “I feel uncomfortable in the realm of police.”

Toronto’s police have used contact cards for decades, but the practice has been expanded since police introduced the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) in 2006, in response to a spike in shooting homicides in the summer of 2005.

Deputy police chief Peter Sloly acknowledged that the practice of carding in neighbourhoods with a history of gun crime has contributed to mistrust and antagonism among residents. “There is absolutely no doubt that some of our best intentions had unintended impacts on the community,” particularly among young Torontonians of African descent, Sloly said. But he defended the broader need for continued police contact and interaction in communities like Weston-Mount Dennis. “We say to [officers], when the radio isn’t busy, make every effort you can to proactively get out and contact the community.”

Councillor Frances Nunziata (Ward 11, York South-Weston) highlighted resident concerns about the dozens of gun-related homicides and crimes in the area in recent years. Residents expect the police to “go out and talk to the residents,” said Nunziata. Her constituents, she added, have been asking for increased police presence and a return to “small-town policing,” where officers and residents interact on a regular basis.

Johanna Macdonald, a lawyer with Justice for Children and Youth, expressed concern that police have not been transparent about collecting personal information during interactions with young people. “The youth were being told that ‘we’d like to take a photograph of you…and if you don’t want that photograph, we’ll take you in,’” said Macdonald of anecdotal reports JFCY staff began receiving from clients a dozen years ago. When residents brought these stories to police, Macdonald says officers told them “this isn’t happening, we’re not doing this.”

Macdonald also questioned the “procedural fairness” of stopping residents and asking them for personal information, and suggested the practice may violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “Is that a voluntary interaction? With most youth, it’s questionable,” she said. Macdonald called for new safeguards, including a change to the Police Services Act code of conduct that would allow officers who conduct unlawful stops to be sanctioned. The code already lists disrespectful behaviour and unlawful searches as violations.

The Community Legal Aid Services Programme (CLASP) has been partnering with community organizations to collect affidavits from residents who have had negative interactions with police. According to Macdonald, the vast majority of sworn statements received thus far cite unlawful stops as an issue.

Toronto Police Services Board chair Alok Mukherjee said contact cards are meant “to ensure that the process of contact was used for legitimate purposes.” He added, “was the impact necessarily benevolent and beneficial? As deputy Sloly said, not necessarily. That negative impact was not what was intended, so the board has a concern.” Mukherjee referenced the 2007 Human Rights Project Charter, a partnership between the board, the police service, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission that was created to address a number of human rights complaints against the police. The recommendations of that initiative have not “seeped all the way down throughout the organization,” he said.

The Police Services Board has asked Toronto’s Auditor General, Jeff Griffiths, to conduct a review of police contacts to determine, in Mukherjee’s words, “what type of contacts are legitimate policing contacts, and which ones need to be considered because of the negative impact.” The board is also urging Police Chief Bill Blair to consider the cost and feasibility of issuing copies of contact cards to people who are carded.

Residents at the meeting welcomed talk of new accountability measures, but expressed frustration over decades of negative police interaction. Many questioned the police service’s sincerity in addressing concerns about racial profiling. Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, a lawyer who has documented his own experiences with alleged racial profiling in the justice system, remarked that “the police can only do what they can get away with.”

“The whole society tolerates racial profiling,” he added.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/piper09/4428997204/in/photostream/"}Piper09{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/pool/"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Tuesday was a busy night for social justice in the city. Ryerson was hosting a discussion as part of their Social Justice Week. Over at Church of the Redeemer there was a panel discussion of Bill C-10, the federal government’s omnibus “tough on crime” bill. Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis were out for Michele Landsberg’s Writing the Revolution book launch. Occupy Toronto had settled in to St. James Park. And over at Innis College, the Toronto Police Accountability Coaltion was hosting their optimistically titled “We can improve Toronto policing!” public forum.

Essentially, the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition suggests ways the police could do their job better. That’s an awkward thing to tell anyone in any job, but an especially awkward thing to tell a traditionally secretive and uncooperative agency. An agency that has the authority to use force and could, potentially, make life difficult. Police are highly organized and fiercely loyal, and they would prefer if the public would just echo that loyalty. When it comes to the police, you are either with them or against them. A fan or an enemy. The Toronto Police Accountability Coalition tries to fill that space in between. The space that says, Thanks for doing the very difficult work you do, but there are issues that need to be addressed.

U of T alumnus Miri Russell was one of about 25 people who made it out on Tuesday, for the keynote address from criminologist Scot Wortley and a subsequent group discussion. Some of those present were longtime members of the 10 year–old police activism group, and some, like Russell, were just starting out.

First-timers or not, TPAC wanted the crowd’s input. On a night when lots of Torontonians were thinking about social justice, TPAC organizers, including founder and former mayor John Sewell, aimed higher: they focused on making concrete plans, devising practical solutions to some of what they see as the greatest issues facing police accountability today. (The word “concrete” was used a lot, in fact—by patient moderators trying to keep the conversation on track and by Wortley in his address. During the group conversation on the topic of changing police culture, when someone suggested that we just throw out the whole lot of goons and start fresh, he was politely asked to be more specific, more concrete.)

When it comes to discussions about police and policing, especially for Toronto—where we are still dealing with the aftermath of the G20—emotions can run high. So TPAC encouraged dispassionate discussions grounded in empirical evidence and tangible solutions. They have seen this tactic work at the Toronto Police Services Board before, when TPAC member Harvey Simmons (who was at Tuesday’s meeting) successfully convinced the board to enact a name-tag policy, despite police resistance in the name of officer safety. Police claimed criminals would seek out the named officers for revenge—an argument that conveniently bypasses the fact that the names of arresting officers were already available to the accused on court documents.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alvinwoon/2444171693/"}Daily misery{/a} from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Inspired by Simmons’ success at the Toronto Police Services Board and Wortley’s opening remarks on the importance of collecting data on police activities, the group then sketched out one concrete measure to help combat gender bias and victim-blaming in the force: gather citizen’s and women’s groups, contact the media, and go en masse to the Toronto Police Services Board asking the police to prove, exactly, how they are combating the problem. Ask for data: on what dates did the relevant training on this subject occur, what was the curriculum, who teaches these courses? In this case, that could mean asking for an update on the “further professional training” the Toronto Police Services promised an officer would be required to take after he advised against dressing “slutty” in order to avoid assault.

Training is a recurring word in police apologies—the force will often say it will correct missteps by incorporating training on the subject of, say, gender bias. But in his entire career studying police services and associations, Wortley says he has never come across any comprehensive evaluation of police training efforts in Canada.

“If we don’t know what the police are doing, what challenges and difficulties they’re engaged in, it’s very difficult to see whether things are improving or getting worse.” The only information he has managed to get about sensitivity training—specifially race-relations training—is that it’s ranked among the least popular training sessions. Near the top of the list: investigation techniques and pursuit driving. The fun stuff. In their defense, officers say they don’t like race-relations training because they don’t think it applies. If they were racists, they wouldn’t be cops, they say.

That’s the thing about trying to correct generations of systemic inequality: no one thinks he’s the one that’s guilty. Changing someone’s attitude is difficult, but monitoring could at least have tangible effects on how an officer does his or her job. It could force officers to consider accountability, to think about explaining their actions on a report back at the division office after walking the beat.

Despite being a public agency dedicated to protecting and serving the public, police are notoriously hesitant to let that public in on what they’re up to. By citing safety, whether to the officers or the public, police associations and services can fend off a good deal of attention without any further questions. North American police services and agencies cited officer safety as an argument against mandatory paperwork for discharging a weapon. They eventually lost that battle, and police and civilian deaths declined in the following years. Basically every modern police accountability measure—the SIU, the public police complaints commissions, the name tags—met with opposition in the name of safety when they were first proposed. But they all passed eventually, in part thanks to groups like TPAC.

After the exclamation “Let’s build a playground!” was bellowed over a booming PA system, volunteers got down to business. Armed with a selection of tools and equipment, including a hundred rakes, a bunch of wheelbarrows, thirty thousand pounds of concrete, and a mountain of mulch, sledgehammers, and shovels, by 2:30 the same afternoon, they had achieved their goal.
In a unique example of community building, Foresters, an insurance provider, along with KaBoom, a nonprofit organization committed to ensuring children have access to play equipment, have paired up to build playgrounds for communities that lack them. Foresters provides the funding; KaBoom provides the know-how. (Since 1996, KaBoom has constructed over 1,800 playgrounds, skate parks, and ice rinks across North America.)
Volunteers participating in this past Sunday’s build were made up of KaBoom organizers as well as employees from Foresters and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. Additional volunteers came from the neighbourhood, while a few others had travelled from as far away as British Columbia and San Diego. Even two of Toronto’s finest helped out, shoveling mulch. George Mohacsi, Foresters’ president and CEO, slipped on work gloves, pitching in to mix batches of concrete.
Seka Kokeza, a Foresters employee participating in her second build, said assembling a playground in six hours was like putting together a bookcase from Ikea, only one hundred times more difficult (unless, of course, you have Superman assemble said bookcase). Playground constructing was hard work, Kokeza admitted, but in the end, when the equipment has been assembled and the ribbon-cutting ceremony complete, seeing the excited expressions on the faces of the children made it worthwhile.
To the children’s chagrin, though, there was a delayed reward aspect associated with the entire undertaking. Because the concrete footings take forty-eight hours to harden, the youngsters have to wait until today before actually getting a chance to break in the new play equipment. Drats!
Back in June, children living in the high-rises took part in a community event called Design Day, providing input for the design of their park space. Many of their suggestions, minus (as one child told us) chocolate bar trees, were incorporated into the play space. On construction day, anticipation of the new playground was palpable: a countdown calendar was taped on a wall in the austere lobby of one building. Printed in a child’s handwriting, they had been x-ing out the days until their dream park became reality.
Thanks to the hard work of numerous volunteers this past Sunday, one Toronto neighbourhood received a playground, and it won’t be the last. This year, Foresters and KaBoom will work together building twenty playgrounds across North America and two more in the GTA—one in Mississauga, and the other in Brampton.
Photos by D.A. Cooper/Torontoist.