Toronto police preparing for up to 30 per cent of staff to get Omicron, chief says in year-end interview

Chief James Ramer added that it was wrong not to criminally charge a Toronto homicide cop who repeatedly stole opioids from the force’s evidence lockers.

Thestar.com
Dec. 21, 2021
Wendy Gillis

The veteran Toronto police detective who repeatedly stole opioids from the force’s evidence locker and from two active homicide cases should have been criminally charged, the force’s police chief says in a year-end interview.

In a controversial decision first reported by the Star in February, Det. Paul Worden was allowed to quietly retire without facing criminal charges even though police discovered he’d been stealing opioids from evidence lockers all across the city. After Worden cited a drug addiction that began with prescription painkillers, Toronto police didn’t charge him.

It was the wrong call, Ramer said.

“I think our people were well-intentioned, looking at it from a wellness perspective, but from my view, he should have been charged criminally,” Ramer said in a sit-down, year-end interview.

The wide-ranging conversation took place Friday, just hours before Ramer tested positive for COVID-19 after a routine test, and as the force was, once again, making contingency plans amid rising COVID-19 case counts. In a statement late Friday night, Toronto police said Ramer was fully vaccinated, asymptomatic and isolating at home.

Ramer had told the Star the highly contagious Omicron variant meant he was suddenly preparing for a scenario where 20 to 30 per cent of his workforce is sickened -- that’s “the biggest thing we’re confronted with right now,” he said.

Earlier this year, Toronto police enacted a mandatory vaccination policy, a move opposed by the Toronto Police Association. It was a “difficult” choice, Ramer said, in part because 1,000 of the approximately 7,400 Toronto police employees initially did not provide their vaccination status, making staffing decisions challenging. Ultimately, less than three per cent of the total workforce was forced to take an “indefinite unpaid absence” for failing to get fully vaccinated, a number that’s shrunk in recent weeks and can be managed “for a short time,” Ramer said.

The COVID-19 pandemic was also cited by the Toronto police board as a reason why it opted in August to extend Ramer’s contract to Dec. 31, 2022 -- a move that came after the board initially said the next police chief would be chosen this year.

Ramer was named interim chief after the sudden and early departure of former chief Mark Saunders in June 2020. His prolonged appointment has since prompted some criticism that the civilian board, which includes Mayor John Tory, is drawing out the chief selection process at a critical time for policing in the city; Ramer’s extension came just months after the board spent $150,000 on public consultations on the next chief, feedback that will be over a year old before any choice is made.

Asked about the criticism, Ramer defended the board’s decision, in part because the proper hiring process hasn’t taken place.

“The board’s position and responsibility is to appoint the chief, and so they appointed me in August of 2020 for an interim period, and then they now asked me to, and I’ve agreed to, go as long as Dec. 31, 2022,” Ramer said.

Ramer said he hopes his replacement will come from within the Toronto police, but “it ultimately will be the decision of the board.”

The board will decide, too, on Toronto police’s 2022 operating budget early next year. Just a year after fevered calls to “defund the police” echoed across the city, Ramer said the force is poised to ask for a budget increase for 2022, though it’s not clear how much. In three of the last five years, the service has not asked for an increase, resulting in a reduction of staff, Ramer said.

The police budget now exceeds $1-billion and is the City of Toronto’s single largest line item.

“Our financial people are still working on the numbers, but I’m thinking that we’re going to need a modest investment if we’re going to be able to do, you know, what the city needs and what it deserves,” Ramer said.

Ramer said resources will be needed in part to continue work on Toronto police reform recommendations and to address the 151 proposed changes outlined in a sweeping April 2021 report that uncovered “serious flaws” in Toronto police missing persons investigations.

The missing persons review by former Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Gloria Epstein was launched amid controversy over the force’s handling of Bruce McArthur, the serial killer who murdered eight men from Toronto’s Gay Village between 2010 to 2017. Among Epstein’s findings were that Toronto police repeatedly failed to meet mandatory provincial standards on “major case management” -- an organizational investigative system created in response to serial killer Paul Bernardo. The system is intended to combat the silos between police forces that helped Bernardo avoid detection.

Ramer has called the investigative shortcomings Epstein identified “inexcusable,” and said Toronto police will be fully compliant with provincial major case management standards by 2023.

“From my perspective, it’s going to reduce victimization, it’s going to save lives,” Ramer said. “And so we’re committed to it.”

Despite admitting his force was wrong not to charge Worden for stealing drug evidence, Ramer would not commit, however, to releasing the results of the external investigation into the incident conducted by the Ontario Provincial Police.

Ramer tapped the OPP earlier this year to review the impact of Worden’s thefts on drug and homicide cases, as well as the Toronto police decision not to charge him. The OPP confirmed the report is done but Ramer said he hasn’t seen it.

When asked if he would make the report public, Ramer said it will depend on what the OPP found, noting he is bound by provisions under Ontario’s Police Services Act. An internal Toronto police report obtained by the Star estimated that Worden’s actions could impact 17 criminal cases.

Asked about his role in the decision not to charge Worden, Ramer said he was informed about it after the fact.

Ramer said a formal policy has since been created stating that Toronto police cannot make decisions about whether or not to lay criminal charges against their officers without first consulting with Crown prosecutors.

For Ramer, 2021 also saw the continuation of long-standing issues including gang violence. As of Dec. 20, the city’s homicide count sits at 81 -- the highest since 2018’s record-breaking year -- with more than half of those killings caused by guns.

A major concern, he said, has been the rising number of gang-related shootings where gunmen spray bullets at random in neighbourhoods -- “we’ve had people killed that way this year,” Ramer said. Last week, Toronto police charged two men with first-degree murder in the death of Thane Murray, a Regent Park youth worker who police initially said appeared to be the victim of shooters firing at random in a neighbourhood.

“It seems people that are... going about their lives and they suddenly become a victim of these kinds of events, and it’s just such a callous disregard for people,” Ramer said.

Officers are taking a proactive and reactive approach to gun violence, he said. This year, the force permanently installed its Centralized Shooting Response Team. The team was launched last year as a pilot project testing a co-ordinated, citywide approach to shooting investigations (instead of by individual police divisions), and it has substantially increased solve rates, Ramer said.

He also noted that a “huge” focus has been placed on bail compliance checks and, through the public service response team, aiming to divert people at risk of becoming involved in crime towards alternative supports “to try to take them out of the gang culture.”