How Mayor John Tory changed his tough-on-crime ways

Despite a spike in fatal shootings, Toronto’s mayor is not calling for more police.

Thestar.com
June 13, 2016
By Betsy Powell

In June 2003, Toronto mayoral candidate John Tory ran a tough-on-crime campaign that promised to add 400 police officers to the force’s roster - even if it meant raising property taxes.

The fact was the crime rate had been falling for decades. But just days before Tory released his crime platform, a man was charged with raping and murdering 10-year-old Holly Jones in her west end neighbourhood.

“John Tory, 2003 edition, would not have been unlike many, many candidates who try to get elected by seizing the anti-crime agenda,” says city hall veteran Councillor Joe Mihevc.

That fall, Tory won the controversial backing of the Toronto police union, but lost the election to David Miller.

Thirteen years later, Tory is mayor and gun violence has spiked. Twenty-one of the city’s 33 homicide victims this year were killed by a firearm. (Receiving much less attention are the 17 pedestrian deaths on Toronto streets this year.)

There is no evidence of an upward trend in the overall crime rate. But the default reaction of the police union and some right-wing commentators is that more cops should be hired. Whether doing that would make a difference is a hotly debated subject.

Tory is not among those calling for more police.

Instead, when Tory talks about keeping Toronto safe, he refers to better deployment and outsourcing certain policing tasks to ensure more officers focus on gritty crime-fighting, not “monitoring left turns.”

"A lot of other things have changed, too. I think we've all resolved to make sure that we find different ways to do policing in the city of Toronto,” Tory told a recent news conference on gun violence.

The mayor is recognizing that “the real task of keeping cities safe ... is complicated,” says Mihevc. “There’s crime prevention, lighting, making sure young boys are kept busy ... that of course is not a very sexy campaign slogan.”

This week could be a watershed moment for policing in Toronto - and Tory.

On Thursday, his “transformational task force” on policing will unveil an interim report recommending ways to reorganize and modernize the force, while cutting costs.

Earlier this year, after Mihevc and other councillors tried to flatline the police budget, which pushed past $1 billion, council passed a motion, by a 41-1 vote, that said there is an “urgent and abiding” need to restrain policing costs.

Tory, who sits on the police board, urged councillors to let the task force do its work. “That time has passed and I’m sure he feels an obligation to come forward with something, so he is,” Mihevc says.

“He doesn’t have much wriggle room here. We’re talking revenue tools, and his first point is regularly needing to trim the fat at city hall. Well if he can’t do it with the police then he’s going to lose credibility on that argument.”

Tammy Landau, a criminologist at Ryerson University, says although Tory today may not be the politician he was in 2003, she is skeptical “about the transformation talk.”

“The proof will be in the detail and it’s got to go beyond simply restructuring the police service so it costs less,” she says. “What are they going to do to change how they police?”

But Mihevc says because Tory is a conservative who “tilts” in the law-and-order direction - he is “uniquely placed” to tame the police budget.

“He can say he’s reviewed the (police) books, programs, (decided)‘I think we can do more with less,’ and suggest alternative ways to enhance community safety that may or may not involve police,” says the councillor.

“It would be one thing for Joe Mihevc to say it; it’s another thing for John Tory to say it.”