Toronto police chief to apologize to Black community as force unveils race-based data: sources

Toronto police Chief James Ramer plans to apologize to the city's Black community, CBC News has learned, as the force prepares to pull back the curtain on data that will reveal the extent to which race has played a role in its use-of-force and strip searches.

Two sources with knowledge of the situation said Ramer, Toronto's interim chief, will make a formal apology at a news conference Wednesday morning.

Ramer's apology comes as the service prepares to unveil data on the overrepresentation of specific communities in policing — nearly three years after first being mandated by the Ontario government to document race-based data in use-of-force incidents.

The data collection began against a backdrop of widespread demonstrations against police brutality, sparked in the U.S. by the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer and, in this city, as questions swirled about the role race may have played in the death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet — a young Black woman who fell to her death from a Toronto balcony after her family called 911 for help.

The data, some of which was shared with media ahead of the release, remains under embargo until 10:30 a.m. ET Wednesday.

The use-of-force information was collected under Toronto police's race-based data collection policy, with the goal of "identifying, measuring and, ultimately, eliminating systemic racism," the force said in a statement ahead of the release.

The data-collection policy followed a key recommendation from a sweeping 2018 interim report on race and policing from the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC). The report found a Black person in Toronto was nearly 20 times more likely than a white person to be shot and killed by police.

It also came after a 2019 report by Court of Appeal Justice Michael Tulloch on random street checks, in which the Ontario judge said the practice generates only "low quality intelligence" and alienates certain communities from the police.

After being mandated to collect race-based data on use-of-force, the force says it "went a step further than mandated" and committed to also gather race-based data on strip searches. That data collection began in January 2020.