City of Toronto renews fight to fire bylaw officer in racial profiling dispute

Thestar.com
Jan. 3, 2023

The City of Toronto is going to court in an attempt to overturn an order that forced it to rehire a bylaw officer accused of racial profiling.

The city fired the veteran municipal standards officer a little over two years ago, over allegations he discriminated against two Black women while enforcing COVID-19 restrictions in an Etobicoke park. The incident received widespread media coverage, and prompted concerns about unequal enforcement of pandemic rules.

The officer at the centre of the case denied the allegations and his union filed a grievance challenging his dismissal. This June, the arbitrator presiding over the case determined the city was wrong to fire him, and ordered him reinstated.

The Star has learned the city is challenging that decision, and has filed an application for a judicial review with Ontario’s Divisional Court, asking the arbitrator’s award be quashed.

“The city is disappointed with the arbitrator’s decision and conclusions,” and “remains committed to confronting anti-Black racism,” city spokesperson Alex Burke said in an email.

She said the officer was fired on Nov. 18, 2020, after a third-party investigator “applied the proper anti-racism analysis ... and concluded that the officer singled out the complainants” and “engaged in anti-Black racism.”

Burke confirmed the city rehired the man earlier this year as a result of the arbitrator’s ruling, but wouldn’t say what position he holds.

The union, CUPE Local 79, said it couldn’t comment on the case this week. Reached by phone, the officer, whom the Star isn’t naming because the allegations against him are subject to an ongoing legal dispute, declined to talk. The complainants, who have previously spoken publicly about the case, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The incident occurred as the complainants were leaving Centennial Park Stadium on June 16, 2020. The pair had been working out there and were among several people using the facility that day, despite it being closed due to the pandemic.

The women alleged that as they left the field the officer, who is white and at the time had worked for the city for 19 years, told them they could be shot for trespassing. They also alleged he asked for their identification, but didn’t make the same request to white people at the stadium.

The interaction occurred three weeks after George Floyd’s murder in Minnesota refocused global attention on anger over anti-Black racism, and the Toronto incident provoked public outcry when the women posted video of a portion of it to social media. The pair filed a complaint with Toronto’s Human Rights Office, alleging they had been harassed because of the colour of their skin.

“Everywhere we’re seeing people in a position of authority threatening Black people. That really shook us,” one of the complainants told the Star in June 2020.

“The city needs to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

The officer was initially suspended with pay but was fired after the city-commissioned investigation, conducted by Yola Grant, a former associate chair of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, determined his actions violated various policies, including Toronto’s Human Rights and Anti-Harassment and Discrimination Policy, and the provincial Human Rights Code.

But in the June 8, 2022, decision reversing the officer’s dismissal, arbitrator Matthew R. Wilson found there was no evidence the employee’s actions were motivated by racism.

According to the award, during the grievance proceedings the officer didn’t dispute he made the “trespass and shoot” comment, and he acknowledged the remark was “inherently violent, inappropriate and unnecessary.”

But while the officer conceded he “should have handled the situation better” and expressed remorse, he “steadfastly denied treating the complainants differently based on their race,” Wilson wrote.

The union presented evidence that he had used a similar phrase when confronting a group of non-Black teens on a previous occasion, and argued his comment and his request for ID wasn’t directed solely at the two complainants, but also at a pair of white teens who were leaving the stadium at the same time.

Wilson determined the women “sincerely believe they were discriminated against.” But he wrote that while the “trespass and shoot” comment was “inconsistent with the standards of behaviour expected of a city employee,” the city hadn’t proven the officer had directed it solely at the complainants.

He ordered the officer’s punishment be reduced to a 30-day suspension without pay, and that the city reinstate him without a loss of seniority and with compensation for lost wages.

The city initially filed an application for a judicial review in June, but has been ordered to refile by Jan. 5 after CUPE Local 79 challenged some of its evidence.

Among the arguments in the city’s initial filing is a claim that the arbitrator “erred in law” by improperly considering the officer’s motivations when determining whether the complainants were discriminated against.

The union has until Jan. 31 to file its response.