Toronto names police chief: Deputy Chief Myron Demkiw will replace James Ramer

Assumes the post amid pressure to reform policing, and during a spate of gun crime. In 2000, he conducted a plain clothes raid of a lesbian bathhouse.

Thestar.com
Sept. 16, 2022
Wendy Gillis

After an unprecedented two-year search for the city’s top cop, Toronto’s police board has chosen one of its own, a veteran officer known for his investigative experience who has signed on for a three-year term.

Acting deputy police chief Myron Demkiw was named the incoming chief Thursday, continuing a long tradition in Canada’s largest municipal police force of selecting its top leadership from within its own ranks.

Demkiw, a 32-year veteran of Toronto police now in charge of the force’s Special Operations Command, takes the reins in December, inheriting a police service under continued pressure to cut its $1-billion dollar budget and a city experiencing sustained levels of violent crime, often involving guns. He assumes the post amid pressure to reform policing and address systemic racism in the force, as officers, themselves, call for cultural change from within.

Toronto Police Service is reeling from the death of Const. Andrew Hong, who was shot at close range Monday inside a Mississauga Tim Hortons, one of two people killed in a shooting rampage that ended when officers shot and killed the gunman, Sean Petrie.

Hong had been the instructor of a police motorcycle training course and was in uniform at the time he was “ambushed,” police said. On Thursday, investigators said they believe Hong was targeted because he was a police officer.

Because of this, Demkiw released only a brief statement Thursday, saying he was grateful to the board for its confidence in him.

“Out of respect for our grieving members, I am reserving further comment at this time. Thank you Toronto. I look forward to serving,” Demkiw wrote on Twitter.

Toronto police board said it “recognizes that this is an extremely difficult and sensitive period,” but said the announcement was nonetheless being made because the board wanted “to share a matter of significant organizational and public interest.”

Demkiw’s appointment will end a period of more than two years of interim leadership. Chief James Ramer stepped into the role in August 2020, after the unexpected early departure of former chief Mark Saunders, who, in 2015, was hired as the city’s first Black chief and left the job eight months early.

Demkiw is known in policing circles for being a close ally of Ramer, and he became acting deputy police chief under him in 2020. Since then, Demkiw has stepped more into the public eye, becoming visible during press conferences and speaking out about police operations, including during an announcement earlier this year about Toronto police helping to dismantle a global child sex abuse network.

Julius Haag, a criminologist at the University of Toronto, whose research focuses on policing, said the selection of Demkiw as the next chief by the board, whose members include Mayor John Tory, may be seen by some as an endorsement of Ramer’s time at the helm.

“This may be seen as a continuation of the trajectory that Chief Ramer laid out,” Haag said.

Critics questioned whether the selection of a chief drawn from Toronto police, itself, shows the dedication to making fundamental changes to policing.

These include addressing calls to reform policing made during the outcry over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was fired and is now in prison.

“Anybody who’s worked for the Toronto Police for 32 years is not going to make any change,” said John Sewell, former Toronto mayor and member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition.

“And that’s a big problem.”

Sewell questioned why the board took two years and hired an executive search firm at the cost of $150,000 to select a candidate from within.

The seven-member Toronto police board has faced criticism for the length of its search for the next chief, particularly as Toronto police has seen an exodus of senior cops, including the departure of three deputy police chiefs who, respectively, retired, left for another job and took a secondment.

The board has defended its search as “the most comprehensive selection process in its history.” Ryan Teschner, the board’s executive director, said it included extensive consultation with the community.

Audrey Campbell, former president of the Jamaican Canadian Association, who sat on the external advisory committee and conducted interviews, said the board committed to a thorough search and “it held its word.

“The process that was used, it gave the panel and everyone involved the opportunity to just dig a little deeper into certain aspects of the candidate,” Campbell said Thursday.

Demkiw’s appointment comes on the heels of the release in June of damning race-based statistics showing Black Torontonians were five times more likely to have force used against them by police than white ones. Said Ramer, about systemic discrimination in policing: “I am sorry and I apologize unreservedly.”

The gesture was rejected by some members of the city’s Black communities, who said the acknowledgment came too late, after decades of outcry over over-policing of racialized communities and fatal police shootings of Black men.

The appointment of a white male leader to head the service amid calls for greater representation within policing may mean “you’ll have members of racialized communities or the Black communities here in Toronto asking questions,” said Haag, although he noted there were strained relations and issues with trust under Saunders, the force’s first Black chief.

Jacqueline Edwards, president of the Association of Black Law Enforcers, said Thursday that her organization welcomes the opportunity to work with Demkiw.

“Toronto police continues to work through significant challenges with anti-Black racism and systemic discrimination within its membership and across Black communities. We look forward to Chief Demkiw moving past commitments to sincere action in addressing these matters,” Edwards said in a statement.

Tory, who sits on the police board, said he was confident Demkiw would continue the work underway on police reform.

“We must continue to reform and modernize our police service, and we must ensure that every resident across our city feels respected and protected,” he said in a statement.

Biographical information released on Thursday stated that, in 2019, Demkiw joined the Black Internal Support Network (BISN) as a senior adviser, and has worked on issues relating to anti-Black racism experienced by police employees.

Toronto Police Association president, Jon Reid, said Thursday that, in recent years, the police union has had a “productive and respectful working relationship” with Ramer. Reid said he is confident that will continue with Demkiw.

“While we may have different approaches from time to time, our goals are aligned -- a police service that is resourced, staffed, and trained to deliver the level of policing the community deserves,” Reid said.

Demkiw brings experience in investigative policing to his job, including leading detective operations that oversee the homicide squad; the integrated, guns-and-gangs task force; and the holdup squad.

He joined the police service in 1990, later joining the vice squad in Toronto’s special-investigation-services unit. He conducted an infamous plain clothes raid of the Pussy Palace, a lesbian bathhouse.

In 2002, the Ontario Court of Justice found the search was carried out in an unreasonable manner.

No arrests were made that night, and a subsequent human rights complaint was settled in 2004. Part of the settlement compelled Toronto police to enhance efforts to recruit gay officers, adopt a gender-sensitive policy and pay $350,000 to the complainants.

Kyle Rae, then a downtown Toronto city councillor, issued a news release in the wake of the raid blasting police, accusing officers of trying to ogle naked women, calling it a “panty raid.” Demkiw and six other officers sued Rae over remarks he made for defamation, and won.

In the years since, Demkiw has served in various roles within Toronto police, including as the unit commander of Intelligence Services.

In 2018, while heading the force’s detective operations branch, Demkiw helped launch the force’s Missing Persons Unit.

The unit was formed in the wake of the outcry over the Bruce McArthur serial killer case. Toronto police’s handling of the case exposed serious problems in how officers were investigating missing people.

Demkiw will sign a three-year contract; recent chiefs, including Saunders and Blair, have signed a five-year contract to start.

When asked about the duration of Demkiw’s term, Teschner said the board had updated its contract, including the term and renewal, before making the decision to hire him.

Teschner said a three-year term, with the possibility to renew it, “strikes the right balance between stable leadership, the need for succession in any organization, and the ability to move forward on continuing modernization.”