Introduction
Toronto’s reputation as the diverse, inclusive, and racially harmonious city has been (re-)circulating for decades across various mediums, including politics, media, literature, and digital platforms. In 2016, the BBC named Toronto “the most diverse city in the world” because of its large foreign-born population (BBC Radio 4 2016), and in 2022, it was the city “long known for welcoming multiculturalism and diversity (more than 140 languages are spoken here)” (BBC 2022, para. 1). As Toronto activist and journalist Desmond (Reference Desmond2015) also writes, “There’s this idea that Toronto is becoming a post-racial city, a multicultural utopia where the colour of your skin has no bearing on your prospects” (para. 10).
And yet, over the past several decades, the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force has repeatedly engaged in acts of racial violence, including racial profilingFootnote 1 and responsibility for the serious injury or death of several Black and other racialized Others.Footnote 2 This paper will address the question: How does Toronto’s municipal government respond to demands to address racialized police violence in a city that is defined by its diversity and racially harmonious sensibilities? We do so by focusing specifically on the Albert Johnson case as an influential “event”Footnote 3 in the path of policy recommendations seeking accountability for racism in policing. In 1979, the killing of Albert Johnson by Metropolitan Police greatly intensified calls to hold police accountable for their actions. Community groups applied pressure to the local government bodies of the time (Metropolitan Toronto, former City of Toronto) and the Metropolitan Police Board of Commissioners for them to investigate and act to intervene in what the community recognized as a pattern of racialized violence on the part of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force. Drawing on the Albert Johnson case, we show how Toronto government policies and practices purporting to address racism in policing work to both obscure and protect such violence against public accountability. We also carefully trace and illuminate how racialized police violence in Toronto provides the foundation for contemporary discourses reproducing the City of Toronto as a “diverse,” racially harmonious space.
Defining Toronto Governments: Metropolitan Toronto and the Former City of Toronto
Metropolitan Toronto, commonly known as “Metro,” was a tiered government system set up under the 1954 Province of Ontario Planning Act. The townships of Etobicoke, York, North York, East York, Scarborough, and the former City of Toronto were created as distinct planning authorities under the broader umbrella of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto. While these bodies had their own governance structures, they existed under the auspices of the Metropolitan planning authority and typically followed the lead of Metro government. In 1998, under the provincial leadership of Premier Mike Harris, amalgamation of the boroughs turned Metro and the boroughs into the “Megacity” City of Toronto, as it is known today.
Our research project carefully traced and analyzed Metropolitan Toronto and former Toronto records—Council and committee agendas, reports, meeting minutes, policies, bylaws, and attachments, as well as personal records from Aldermen/Councillors and other government officials, indexed and stored in boxes in the City of Toronto archives—from 1968 to 1997. Although the scope of this project extends to December 2023 and thus to the amalgamated City of Toronto as we know it today, we have limited ourselves to discussing this time period and these levels of government because of the significance of the Albert Johnson case. Our research discovered patterns of institutional and/or discursive acts surrounding racialized violence specifically at the hands of Metropolitan Toronto Police and especially in response to intensifying calls for police reform. The Albert Johnson case anchors an understanding of these patterns.
Race, Policing, and Resistance in Toronto—An Overview
A review of the literature shows that the history of racialized violence in policing in Toronto follows a disturbingly circular pattern. Below, we detail some of the acts of racialized violence in policing from 1968 to 1997, leading to various moves to reform the Metropolitan Toronto Police initiated by organizations, government bodies, and/or in response to community resistance; however, this review is by no means exhaustive.
Beginning in 1974, local news media, including The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Contrast, and The Islander, increasingly published stories that drew attention to a pattern of racialized police violence and other racist incidents in Toronto (Head and Lee Reference Head and Lee1975, 2; Kierylo Reference Kierylo2012, 222). In his 1975 report commissioned by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC), York University professor Wilson A. Head surveyed 210 adult Black civilians in Toronto (Head and Lee 1975, 30). Of the respondents, 105 indicated they felt the police discriminated in their treatment of the Black population; 68 had actually witnessed discriminatory acts themselves (107). Head wrote, “The police are accused of continuous harassment of blacks…blacks are often stopped by police who are looking for illegal immigrants…” (64).
Metropolitan Toronto Police violence escalated in the late 1970s. In figures that represented a substantial increase over the earlier years of the decade, the Metro Police Force shot and killed eight persons in the twelve-month period of August 1978 to August 1979: Hans Nattinen, Andrew “Buddy” Evans, Steven Kalemis, Michael Wawryniuk, William Elie, Aquilino Torcato, Albert Johnson, and Paul Reid (Abraham et al. Reference Abraham, Field, Harding and Skurka1981, 202). In the case of two Black men, Buddy Evans and Albert Johnson, serious questions about the legality of police conduct were publicly raised (Abraham et al. Reference Abraham, Field, Harding and Skurka1981, 224). The OHRC subsequently wrote a public letter declaring the urgent need for the police complaints process to become independent (Chadha Reference Chadha2021).
Between 1979 and 1988, the OHRC and the Toronto Media Co-operative (TMC) documented at least five more police shootings of Black men by the Toronto police, in addition to the serious shooting injuries of 23-year-old Sophia Cook in 1989 and 16-year-old Marlon Neil in 1990. The Government of Ontario also created the Race Relations and Policing Task Force to investigate systemic racism in policing across the province of Ontario in response to the police-officer shootings (and subsequent acquittals) of two Black residents of the Greater Toronto Area: 44-year-old Lester Donaldson in August 1988 and 17-year-old Michael Wade Lawson in December 1988 (Lewis Reference Lewis1989; Nangwaya Reference Nangwaya2013; OHRC 2018). Policing reforms proposed by the Ontario government in response to the killings of Donaldson and Lawson included the creation of new civilian oversight bodies, like the establishment of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) in 1990 (Mukherjee and Harper Reference Mukherjee and Harper2018; Wortley and Owusu-Bempah Reference Wortley and Owusu-Bempah2022).
In 1991, Toronto police officers were responsible for the shooting death of an unnamed, unarmed African-Canadian teenager (details such as age and gender were not disclosed) as well as the serious shooting injuries of 24-year-old Jonathan Howell and 21-year-old Royan Bagnaut; the officers involved were all cleared of any charges (Nangwaya Reference Nangwaya2013; OHRC 2024). And in May 1992, around the same time of the protests in L.A. after the acquittals of the officers who assaulted Rodney King, Toronto police officers shot and killed a young Black man named Raymond Lawrence. The Black Action Defense Committee, a community advocacy group established in 1988 mobilizing around the mass discontent of police investigations concluding in police acquittals (James Reference James, Kitossa, Lawson and Howard2019, 33–34), organized a demonstration of 500 outside the U.S. Consulate (Nangwaya Reference Nangwaya2013; Wortley and Owusu-Bempah Reference Wortley and Owusu-Bempah2022). The media called this event the “Yonge Street Riot/Uprising,” and it led to the provincial appointment of Stephen Lewis to investigate the event’s causes (Nangwaya Reference Nangwaya2013; OHRC 2018). For his Report of the Advisor on Race Relations to the Premier of Ontario, Lewis held “more than 70 meetings with individuals and groups in Metro Toronto, Ottawa, Windsor, and beyond” (Lewis Reference Lewis1992, 1) and wrote that “just as the soothing balm of “multiculturalism” cannot mask racism, so racism cannot mask its primary target… there was a weary and bitter sense that (we) were engaged in yet another reporting charade” (2–3).
In the spring/summer of 1993, Toronto police officers shot and killed 21-year-old Ian Coley and publicly strip-searched 37-year-old Audrey Smith, a tourist from Jamaica (Nangwaya Reference Nangwaya2013; OHRC 2024). The officer who killed Coley, Rick Shank of Division 41, killed another man in 1997: 31-year-old Hugh Dawson. The SIU cleared these officers of wrongdoing, along with officers involved in the deadly shootings of 41-year-old Albert Moses in September 1994; of 22-year-old Tommy Barnett in January 1996; of 24-year-old Andrew Bramwell in March 1996; and of 24-year-old Wayne Williams in June 1996 (Nangwaya Reference Nangwaya2013).
Although there certainly are more documented cases of racialized police violence in Toronto during this time period, the cases we have included above suggest that racism in Toronto policing continued, despite multiple protests, reports, and policies pushing for police reform (Meng Reference Meng2014, 30; Mensah et al. Reference Mensah, Firang, Williams and Afrifah2021, 68). Importantly, and as we detail later in this paper, these (and other) acts of racialized police violence also occurred and continued despite Toronto government claims to “embrace” diversity and prioritize inclusion. Below, we focus specifically on police reform efforts initiated by Toronto governments (Metro, former Toronto) to address racism in policing, given this context. We detail some of the more significant reform efforts arising from and/or resulting in public consultations with Black and other racialized groups, as well as “special” reports or inquiries commissioned by Toronto governments specifically to address racism in Toronto policing; again, this list is not exhaustive.
Public Consultations, Report-Writing, and Police Reform—1968 to 1997
In 1974, in response to a series of highly publicized complaints against Metro police officers, the Metro government appointed Arthur Maloney, Q.C. to study the contemporary procedures for laying complaints against the police; among his recommendations for their reform was the appointment of an independent civilian commissioner of complaints (Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Linden and Keene1986). Between 1975 and 1980, at least six special inquiries commissioned by Toronto and Ontario governments had either “explicitly addressed the relationship of racial minorities to policing (Carter and Gerald Reference Carter and Gerald1979; Clement 1980; Pitman 1977) or had direct bearing on this issue (Maloney 1975; Morand 1976; Robarts 1977)” (Stasiulis Reference Stasiulis1989, 69). For example, in 1977, a report was commissioned by the Metro Council on racism and racial violence in Toronto after a series of subway beatings involving individuals of South Asian heritage on December 31, 1976. The final report to Metro Council, “Now Is Not Too Late,” was led by Walter Pitman and the Task Force and Human Relations committee, composed of 14 majority racialized “outside”Footnote 4 members who consulted with 93 outside organizations mostly representing racialized and Indigenous communities and over 150 individuals, in addition to receiving 87 briefs submitted by mostly racialized and Indigenous groups, to gain feedback on how to address increasing racism in Toronto (Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto 1977). The report offered 42 recommendations to Metro Council on how to address increasing racism and racial violence in Toronto, 18 of which sought to specifically address racism at the hands of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force (Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto 1977).
On September 6, 1979, after the killing of Albert Johnson and amid numerous growing protests from community groups against racialized police violence, Metro Council recruited Archbishop Gerald Emmet Cardinal Carter to act as a “conciliator” between minority groups and the police (Carter and Gerald Reference Carter and Gerald1979, 6). His meetings with individuals, community groups, and organizations demanding accountability for racialized police violence revealed a “fairly general opinion” that filing racial complaints against police was not only futile but also dangerous, instigating violent police retaliation (Carter and Gerald Reference Carter and Gerald1979, 2). In November of that same year, the number of protesters grew; at least 2,000 South Asian and Black protestors marched against the lack of government action to address racist attacks and police brutality (Kierylo Reference Kierylo2012, 284).
During the 1980s, as concerns over racism and discrimination in policing rose, Metro and the former City of Toronto continued their strategy of public consultations. However, as Carl James (Reference James, Kitossa, Lawson and Howard2019) notes, efforts to discuss/address racialized police violence were also made to label and ultimately silence dissenting voices advocating outside of “official” public consultations; this was evidenced in 1990, when city officials referred to community leaders who voiced their anger about police shootings of Black people via the media, protests, and other outside domains as “radicals” and cowards” (33).
In 1992, following the Yonge Street Riot/Uprising and increasing calls from individuals, community groups, organizations, and government officials to address concerns of policing and race relations, Metro Council commissioned an audit of the Metropolitan Police. Metropolitan City Auditor Allan G. Andrews conducted numerous interviews with officers of various ranks and consulted with 25 community organizations representing some of Toronto’s racial and ethnic communities, which included the (former) Toronto Mayor’s Committee on Community and Race Relations as well as the Etobicoke and North York Race and Ethnic Relations committees (Andrew Reference Andrews1992, 118). In this report, Andrews documents how in response to consultations (public and professional) and report-writing activities, including Walter Pitman’s report (1977) for the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto; the Hickling-Johnston consultant’s report (1982) for the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force; as well as the “Report of the Race Relations and Policing Task Force” by Clare Lewis (Reference Lewis1989) for the provincial government, “effort has been directed towards changes around the fringes of the operation or accommodation of differences in the community, without recognizing the fact that the institution, its culture and its values need to change” (138). Andrews’ report also notes that police reform efforts to date had done little to address the core issue: police “bias in behaviour which produces unequal treatment of individuals of different cultural or racial background” (2).
Public consultations, the production of reports, and police reform efforts addressing racism in policing are intertwined in this history. However, for many, the Albert Johnson case became an early symbol of both Metro Toronto police racism and effective advocacy/organizing for police reform, mobilizing “the Black community in particular” to pressure institutional targets (Stasiulis Reference Stasiulis1989, 67). Our work focuses specifically on Toronto government responses to the Albert Johnson killing because of the institutional and discursive patterns we traced, arising from and intensifying because of 1) the increasing public pressure specifically on Metro and former Toronto governments to address racism and racialized violence in policing, as demonstrated through mass protests, media attention, and other “outsider” tactics pushing for police reform; and 2) the significant rise in advocacy from individuals, community groups, and organizations across Toronto for an independent, civilian review of police, taken up by Toronto governments and subsequently put in place “post” the Johnson case as a (potential) solution to police racism.
The Albert Johnson Case
The Johnson case began on May 12, 1979, when Albert’s wife Lemona called police over concerns about his behavior—Albert “wouldn’t stop spraying the water hose on their children” (Chadha Reference Chadha2021, para. 3). 6 officers from Division 14 responded to the call, beating Johnson and restraining him with three sets of handcuffs. Johnson was subsequently hospitalized for 3 days. After his release from hospital, Johnson immediately filed an OHRC complaint against the police. Between the end of May and mid-August of that same year, police repeatedly charged Johnson with disturbing the peace (police were later chastised by a judge for laying trivial charges). On August 20th, Johnson reported to Gail Guttentag, the OHRC’s community relations officer assigned to his case, that the “police, on a number of occasions, had told him that they intended to kill him” (Chadha Reference Chadha2021, para. 4).
On August 24, 1979, Metro Police received Johnson’s & the OHRC’s detailed complaint. To ensure prompt police administration responses, the OHRC’s updated policy required them to forward copies of the complaint to the chief of police and the Metro Toronto Board of Commissioners of Police. Metro police initially denied that the complaint had reached the Citizens’ Complaints Bureau by the time of his death, but as criminal and civil litigation progressed, they acknowledged that headquarters had indeed received the complaint.
Johnson was killed by 2 Division 14 officers on August 26, 1979. Police allege that Johnson broke free of a physical altercation in his kitchen and ran upstairs to a bedroom, where he grabbed a lawn edger and came down the stairs swinging. Johnson’s 7-year-old daughter, who was in the home at the time, fully contradicted the account laid out by police, stating that Johnson was struck by police first and then told to kneel before they shot him at close range. Johnson’s daughter’s testimony was discounted in the trial of the officers as unreliable because of “her age and suspicions of coaching” (Chadha Reference Chadha2021, para. 5).
The officers involved were inevitably acquitted by an all-white judge and jury. Importantly, in the preliminary phase of the trial, prosecutors indicated they would not argue that there was a racial motivation to the crime, and as such, racism was not mentioned in the trial. Instead, scrutiny shifted from the actions of the officers to Albert Johnson’s mental health, with “extensive evidence” from the defense portraying Johnson as “dangerous and mentally unstable” (Chadha Reference Chadha2021, para. 5).
Method
Genealogy as a method asks, “What is happening now” and how this “now” is a re-emergence of historical relations of power in the present (Tamboukou Reference Tamboukou1999, 203). This research is also guided by Foucault’s (Reference Foucault and Rabinow1984a) genealogy, specifically his insistence on revisiting “a field of entangled and confused parchments, on documents that have been scratched over, and recopied many times” (76) to trace the historical and constituting effects of discourse, and his analysis of discourse as “event,” where “eventualisation means rediscovering the connections, encounters, supports, blockages, plays of forces, strategies and so on” (Foucault Reference Foucault, Burchell, Gordon and Miller1991, 76) that are obscured through the function(s) of discourse as “truth.” Bowman (Reference Bowman and Hook2007) expands on Foucault’s analyses, offering that “event” is a specific site of oppositions to, and counter-knowledges and contestations of, discursive “truth(s)”; once illuminated, the “event” provides key insights into one of the many “surface(s) of emergence” (147) of power, knowledge, and discourse (as mutually reinforcing). Importantly, this framing challenges the impulse to see the “event” as the only condition of possibility for the power-knowledge-discourse continuum; instead, the goal is to illuminate the multiple and fractured ways “truth” and history are (re-)produced.
Following Lowe (Reference Lowe2015), our goal in illuminating these “alternative accounts” was not to produce a more holistic account of history but to expose the idea of a linear history and its “truths” as being an entirely colonial construction, connected to the reproduction of power. Through a specific focus on diversity and its various antecedents as discourses and thus as “truths,” we began to trace the multiple continuities, blockages, mutations, and reversals that occurred in texts to simultaneously recreate the “diverse” City of Toronto and obscure race and racism.
Our complete study on the relationship(s) between race, racism, and Toronto governments involves a review of Metro, the former City of Toronto, and the amalgamated City of Toronto records from January 1965 to December 2023. We have currently completed a full review of Metro and former City of Toronto records (1965 to 1998) and City of Toronto records up to 2019. Included in our research are Metro, former Toronto, and City of Toronto records that reference terms such as “ethnoracial,” “ethnic group,” “multicultural,” “diverse,” “diversity,” “racialized,” “immigrant,” “Aboriginal,” “visible minority,” “people of colour,” “racism,” and/or “equity.” It is important to note here that prior to 1998, Metro and former Toronto records were only available in bound books, by year, in the City of Toronto archives. Most of the terms noted above did not appear in the indexes for these bound books, so we also reviewed the indexes for any terms we thought might be related to race/racism. These terms, 82 in total, included “human rights,” “crime,” “disabled persons,” “committee,” “task force,” “equal opportunity,” “refugee,” “minority-police relations,” “Chinatown,” “human rights,” “citizen appointments,” “South Asian,” “boat people,” “Black,” “Native,” and “Ontario Human Rights Commission.” Importantly, our foray into Toronto government records relating to race/racism led us to find several key materials indexed under the terms “police” and “police matters.”
We also reviewed “non-official” records relating to race/racism, available in boxed form in the City of Toronto archives. These non-official records include the personal records of Aldermans/Councillors, background materials, memos, press clippings, photographs, various iterations of “official” city reports, reports authored by outside advocacy organizations, communications from interested parties on official matters, and other loose materials. After months of reviewing boxed materials, we learned to restrict our search using seven pre-existing electronically indexed terms, created by City of Toronto archives staff: “racism,” “multiculturalism,” “policing,” “minorities,” “human rights,” “discrimination,” and “employment equity.” We continued our review of boxed materials using these seven search terms.
While our complete search to date yielded hundreds of records relating to race/racism across all three governments, our research traced the emergence of textual representations of Toronto governments as champions of diversity and “anti” racismFootnote 5 as being connected specifically to Metro and former Toronto responses to police racism. Our collection of “a vast accumulation of source material” (Foucault Reference Foucault and Rabinow1984b, 76–77) also led us to several records relating to the Albert Johnson case and, ultimately, to framing the Albert Johnson killing as a significant “event” because of the specific political practices, policies, and actions we found arising from and/or intensifying because of it across all three governments and across time, all of which significantly foregrounded diversity and “anti” racism as “truths” in the City of Toronto. Through a focus on the Albert Johnson killing as an “event,” we began to move outwards, carefully tracing the multiple continuities, mutations, and reversals of the discursive logics that bind diversity against the changing political landscape of the city.
To read these records, we employed tenets of critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA allows for an exploration of the “socially shaped and socially constitutive nature of discourse” (Fairclough Reference Fairclough1993, 134); in other words, traces and cues in texts that are shaped by (and help shape) the nature of a particular social practice. We thus looked for traces and cues that normalize particular historical, political, social, and racial practices and that were also being (re-)created and consumed as “normal” through their (re-)circulation. Hall (Reference Hall1997) also writes that discourse “enables people to know and speaking of things in certain ways” (142), drawing “on elements in other discourses, binding them into its own network of meanings” (156) to produce a kind of homogenous sense of who “we” (the West) are, in relation to “them”/the Other. Hall’s analysis of discourse allowed us to trace not only how the racially harmonious Toronto came to be “known” but also through what means, under what terms, and across whatever shifts might occur in the socio-political and racial landscape of Toronto.
Drawing on the killing of Albert Johnson, we carefully trace and explicate what Toronto government policies and practices addressing racism in policing actually do. The records we include below are inevitably selective due to the limited amount of space we have. Rather than reading for “proof” in quantitative terms, we ask that what these few Metro and former Toronto records do with claims of racism in policing act as a window into the larger political processes and practices that ultimately facilitate the (re-)production of the City of Toronto as the diverse, harmonious city. In the following sections, we carefully outline measures to address racialized police violence “pre” the killing of Albert Johnson and then post, specifically to illuminate the terms under which racialized police violence is increasingly reauthorized and obscured. In this vein, we also complicate the idea that “bringing Others in” via civilian oversight bodies will wholly address racism in policing and question who benefits when Others are brought in, particularly as emblems of police reform.
Findings
We argue that the ongoing participation of and/or consultation with Black and other racialized communities in the City of Toronto to address racism and racialized violence in policing is what largely underpins and, in fact, becomes necessary to the City’s claims of progress on issues of race, all the way up to and including its contemporary post-racial narratives. Drawing on the Johnson murder, we carefully trace how the increasing inclusion of Black and other racialized members in decision-making processes of the State, specifically to address racially motivated police violence, including through ad hoc committees and the numerous data collection activities, reports, and/or recommendations that flow from, through, and alongside them, leads not only to the occlusion of racially motivated police acts but also a detraction of any accountability for them.
Institutionalized Processes Addressing Police Violence: “Pre” the Albert Johnson Case
As noted earlier, our review of Metro and former City of Toronto records led to a discovery of a 1977 report “Now Is Not Too Late,” led by Walter Pitman. In 1978, Metro Council adopted the following policy statement, in response to the Pitman report and its 42 recommendations, 18 of which were focused on addressing racism in policing: “The Council of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto considers the presence of people from a wide range of ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds within the Municipality to be a source of enrichment, diversity and strength” (Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto 1978, 1269). The linking of racism in policing and institutionalized discourses occluding claims of racist police violence begins here, with this Special Committee report.
In addition to this, as former Alderman Pat Sheppard wrote in his December 17, 1977, memo to Metro Chairman Paul Godfrey and members of the Pitman Working Group, Metro Council, the Task Force, and the Human Relations Committee and the many “consulted” individuals and organizations did not have power or jurisdiction to make recommendations on racism in policing in the first place:
Since Metro Council does not control the balance of power vis-à-vis the Police Commission and in light of the fact the Chairman of Metro Council (and a Police Commissioner) supports this current status quo although Metro Council does not, it must be clearly understood that this Committee needs as much advisory power as possible. If we are to hold public meetings encouraging residents to present their problems in an open forum from which we will initiate our recommendations, the support of Metro’s Police Commission members is needed (Sheppard Reference Sheppard1977, 2, authors’ emphases).
This 1977 memo makes clear the limits of power and decision-making of Toronto’s governments, specifically, that any recommendations, reports, and/or decisions by Metro Council on issues of racism in policing and any committees, advisory boards, or public consultations created to address and/or make formal recommendations on issues of racism in policing, including those involved in the Pitman report process, are fruitless and have no weight. Despite this, Metro Council proceeded to form additional advisory committees to address racism and racialized violence in policing after the Pitman Report release, e.g., the 1977 Working Committee On the Pitman Report, the 1978 Special Committee to Consider Report of the Task Force on Human Relations, the 1978 Continuing Committee on Race Relations, the 1979 Working Group on Minority-Police/Police-Minority Relations,Footnote 6 and the 1979 Multicultural Relations Steering Committee, all of which continued to “consult” with hundreds of “outside” members of the public.
We argue that the creation of the various advisory/ad hoc committees and other consultation processes addressing racism in policing, beginning in the 1970s, served as a catalyst for Metro’s and former Toronto’s reputation building as experts on addressing racism as well as the City of Toronto’s inevitable racially harmonious sensibilities and diversity rhetoric because of the mass inclusion of Black and other racialized groups in supposed decision-making processes of the State beginning at that time. Again, our research traced the beginnings of institutionalized discourses occluding racism in policing to the 1978 Pitman Report response from Metro Council (Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto 1978). We argue that taking action(s) to address racism in policing became largely sidelined because of the City’s burgeoning reputation of being “good” at diversity and/or “anti” racism, in policing and elsewhere, facilitated by the presence of hundreds of outside, mostly racialized individuals who participated in consultations on racism, alongside the beginnings of Toronto government reports circulating the City of Toronto as a multicultural/diversity utopia.
As another example, at its meeting on April 2, 1979, Toronto City Council formally endorsed a series of proposals arising from a public meeting of over 400 citizens held on March 26, 1979, to address “police-minority relations” and then added (and approved) the following motion from Alderman Howard, seconded by Alderman Cressy:
“Whereas the March, 1979 edition of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association publication, “News and Views,” published two articles which attacked Jews, Pakistanis, Blacks, Catholics and the gay community….therefore be it resolved that the City of Toronto Council condemn the actions of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association for publishing and not divorcing themselves from such racist and bigoted views; that Toronto City Council request the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association to publish an unequivocal public apology to minority groups in Metro…(City of Toronto 1979a, 245, authors’ emphasis).
Our research traced motions “condemning” racism in policing or asking for/offering apologies to “minority groups” for racism in policing beginning to surface in the late 1970s, “pre” the killing of Albert Johnson. As McElhinny (Reference McElhinny2016) writes, the political apology allows governments to achieve what McElhinny calls “temporal disjuncture” (56); various historical “racial wrong-doings” were invoked by the Canadian federal government and apologized for during the early 1980s multicultural turn, for example, to position both the government and Canadians in general as having learned from their mistakes of the past, never to make again, in effect occluding and/or erasing the existence of ongoing colonial policies and practices. While the specifics of apologies are not the focus of this paper, we extend McElhinny’s analyses to argue that “apology” motions and other acts condemning racism also served to begin to circulate Metro and former Toronto, “pre” Albert Johnson, as both authorities on addressing racism and fully innocent of it.
Institutionalized Processes Addressing Police Violence: “Post” the killing of Albert Johnson
On September 10, 1979, former Toronto Mayor John Sewell made a speech about the Albert Johnson case at a public luncheon:
…his killing is seen by a great number of people as the last straw. Mr. Johnson’s death is a result of systemic behaviour by the policing agency, representing a racist attitude or a shoot-first attitude—or both. Either we’ll be able to get the changes required quickly, or we’ll suffer the consequences of the build-up of anger and hostility, particularly in the Black community (City of Toronto 1979b, 592).
Sewell’s final remarks were that Toronto Police had to be trained to deal with complex issues raised in Toronto, rather than relying on the power of the gun (Sewell Reference Sewell2021, para. 2).
On September 17, 1979, Toronto City Council moved to censure John Sewell, calling his comments “inflammatory and inappropriate” (City of Toronto 1979b, 592). The motion passed. At the same time, Council also passed a series of recommendations urging the Police Board of Commissioners to refrain from making disparaging public statements,Footnote 7 to implement training of officers to exercise restraint when using firearms, and to implement cultural sensitivity training for all officers. These recommendations were all part of an additional motion put forward by former Alderman Cressy, asking for Council’s support for the recommendations to “reiterate its long standing and strong support for the various minority communities in the City of Toronto” (City of Toronto 1979b, 588, authors’ emphasis).
Metro and former Toronto’s “anti” racism gestures—what we describe as motions, recommendations, and other official acts condemning racism in policing, offering apologies and/or support to “minority groups”, public consultations and/or the formation of advisory/ad hoc committees, and report-writing—greatly intensified “post” the killing of Albert Johnson. Importantly, the September 10, 1979, public statement from former Toronto Mayor John Sewell on the killing of Albert Johnson and systemic racism in policing more broadly occurred outside of “official” processes and proceedings yet was invoked in Toronto Council proceedings to simultaneously silence claims of systemic racism in policing and recirculate the city’s multicultural/diversity rhetoric. The additional recommendations put forward by Cressy and others also exhibit the performative nature of the City’s “anti” racism gestures; again, in the Johnson case, Metro and former Toronto Councils had no real decision-making authority with respect to policing in Toronto. This was again confirmed by Cressy’s motion responding to the killing of Albert Johnson (and the growing discontent of the thousands on the “outside”) by also urging the Solicitor General of Ontario and the Attorney General of Ontario—the provincial body actually responsible for overseeing policing in Toronto at the time—“to bring forward his proposals for civilian review of complaints against police action not later than October 11, 1979,” to ensure that investigations into police misconduct are done “separate from the Police Department” (City of Toronto 1979b, 588). It is thus through the numerous additional, largely weightless recommendations put forward “post” the killing of Albert Johnson, including asking for civilian review of complaints against police, that Metro and former Toronto could further position themselves as simultaneously “anti” racism and innocent of it.
Around the same time and in response to the escalating public pressure to address racism and racialized violence in policing “post” the killing of Albert Johnson,Footnote 8 Metro Council commissioned yet another report on racism in policing—the October 29, 1979, Gerald Emmett Cardinal Carter report. The goal of the report, seeking advice on “improving race relations between the various ethnic communities and the Police Department” (Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto 1979, 489), meant that Cardinal Carter “consulted” (again) “with numerous groupings of the Black Community; with the Pakistani Community; with the Sikh Community and with the Homosexual Group” (Carter and Gerald Reference Carter and Gerald1979, 2), in addition to receiving “a great deal of mail on the subject of my concerns” (2). In this report, Cardinal Carter questioned the reasons behind yet another consultation and report-writing process on racism in Toronto policing:
In this connection I wish to make a particular mention of the report called “The Black Presence in the Canadian Mosaic” authored by Dr. Wilson A. Head of the Department of Social Work, Atkinson College, York University, and dated September 1975. This report gave me an invaluable background of the whole situation, and I can fairly say that Dr. Head has described the situation exactly as I have found it to be four years later (3, authors’ emphasis).
I must confess to a certain sense of déjà vu in this operation. The field has been covered with extraordinary thoroughness by the three major Reports which have been prepared since 1974…The existence and the efficiency of these reports tend to emphasize the ad hoc nature of my assignment (5, authors’ emphases).
While the Cardinal Carter report and other similar reports on racism in policing were being commissioned and/or debated by Metro and former Toronto Councils, Metro and former Toronto doubled down on “bringing Others in” via the creation of several additional advisory/ad hoc committees and other consultation processes, effectively institutionalizing and then quelling the thousands of “outside” claims about the Albert Johnson case and racism in policing more broadly due to both the lack of power and jurisdiction of Toronto’s governments in policing and the lack of decision-making power inherent to the City’s advisory/ad hoc committee structure.Footnote 9 For example, the 1979 Working Group on Minority-Police Relations, the 1980 Metropolitan Toronto Committee on Race Relations and Policing, the 1980 Toronto Mayor’s Committee on Community and Race Relations, the 1980 Police Community Relations Public Meeting, the 1982 Toronto Mayor’s Committee on Community and Race Relations Sub-Committee on Policing, and the 1990 Special Community Panel on Race Relations—all with public (mostly racialized) members, advisory in nature, and all referencing the Albert Johnson case and/or previous Council and committee recommendations arising from the case—initiated consultations with hundreds of additional Black and other racialized community members on the issue of racism in policing, leading to the production of numerous, again, weightless, reports. Importantly, these committees also operated largely in isolation from one another, not only increasing the potential for consultation fatigue among members of the public but also overlapping recommendations from the various committees.
Our research also discovered that the Working Group on Minority-Police/Police-Minority Relations spent at least three years pushing recommendations to address racialized police violence forward at both the Metro Council and the former Toronto Council, but without jurisdiction to make these recommendations, the Working Group’s recommendations went largely unheard/unmet. In addition, the Working Group planned to put forward their recommendations at an April 17, 1980, public Metro Toronto Police Commission meeting, where 250 public members showed up to speak (including the publicly formed “Albert Johnson Committee Against Police Brutality”). In an April 14, 1980, letter to the Working Group from the Executive Secretary, Metropolitan Toronto Board of Police, advance notice was given to Working Group members that they would not be allowed to speak at the meeting:
Referring to the Resolution enclosed with your letter, Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 7, are matters which are the responsibility of the Province of Ontario, and over which our Board has no jurisdiction… re Resolution 10, any complaints against Police Officers that are of a racial nature or deal with any minority group are thoroughly checked by the Officer in charge of the Complaint Bureau, who holds the rank of superintendent. He is responsible for analyzing trends of patterns of these complaints. The Officer’s supervisors are also made aware of such complaints, for the appropriate action….in view of the foregoing, the Board is not prepared to schedule the attendance of Your Group on April 17th next (City of Toronto 1980, 4824, authors’ emphases,).
On April 28, 1980, former Toronto City Council approved an additional motion “express[ing] its displeasure at the Commission’s actions on April 17, 1980” (City of Toronto 1980, 4823) and requested the Commission to reconsider, allowing the Working Group to depute at a subsequent May 1, 1980, public meeting. With no follow up from the Police Commission, we were able to trace how the Working Group’s recommendations largely rested with their committee until its end in 1981. However, both Metro and the former Toronto Council are on the record as being in full support of the motions put forward by the Working Group, knowing they and the Working Group had no power or jurisdiction to make them happen; again, “anti” racism without action.
We argue that a major function of these numerous advisory/ad hoc committees “post” the killing of Albert Johnson was to dilute the greatly intensifying community pressure via the making, inclusion, and participation of select “Black political subjects” (Paschel Reference Paschel2016)Footnote 10 and/or “exceptional” subjects (Almeida Reference Almeida2022)Footnote 11 in the City, as “expert” leaders who could give advice to government officials on how to address racism and racialized violence in policing. We also argue that the unofficial role and task of these select, exceptional “insider-Others” (Almeida Reference Almeida2022), as supposed decision-makers and through the consultation activities they took on, was to manage the dissent from the thousands seeking justice for Albert Johnson, thus inhibiting further and perhaps larger collective action(s) on the outside. The “bringing in” or institutionalization of the Albert Johnson case, specifically through the intensification of the “anti” racism busywork of consultations, data collection activities, report-writing, motions, and recommendations, spearheaded by both government officials and “insider” advisory/ad hoc committee members, thus served to contain those with racial claims in policing and beyond, ultimately protecting police racism against public accountability. Although Metro and former Toronto still had no real decision-making power with respect to policing in Toronto, the large-scale presence, inclusion and/or engagement of racial Others through committees and consultations also became proof enough to (re-)confirm Metro and former Toronto as key figures in combatting racism and racialized violence in policing, laying the groundwork for the mass recirculation of racially harmonious, diversity narratives to come.
Independent Civilian Review Board
Our research also revealed that a key demand by committee members and hundreds of “consulted” public members at both the Metro and former Toronto levels, noted across all committees and public consultation records from 1968 to 1997 addressing racism in policing but greatly intensifying “post” the killing of Albert Johnson, was a fully independent civilian review board of Metro Police. At the time of the Johnson killing (in 1979), the police complaint review system was internal—to make a complaint, one had to speak to an officer in a station, perhaps even where the officer one was complaining about worked. Many instead made their complaints to the OHRC, who would refer their concerns to the Metro Toronto Police Citizens Complaints Bureau. In 1977–1978, 72% of complainants were Black (Chadha Reference Chadha2021, para. 2). Police Division 14 was at the epicenter of these complaints, though evidence indicated significant problems throughout the Metro force.
In 1981, “post” the Albert Johnson case and the public outcry that ensued, a pilot project was established enabling the first-ever civilian review of the police handling of complaints through the Public Complaints Commissioner. Importantly, the initial push came from several sources—individuals, community groups, advocacy organizations, government officials, and legal bodies—many of whom believed that civilian oversight would result in greater transparency and accountability in policing and police racism. The pilot project was made permanent in 1984 and expanded province-wide by the 1990 Provincial Police Services Act (Landau Reference Landau1996, 296). However, police were still, by default, the sole investigators during the first 30 days following the complaint (Goldsmith Reference Goldsmith1988; Lewis Reference Lewis1992; McMahon Reference McMahon1988).
From 1990 to 2009, the Government of Ontario continued to revise the Police Services Act (PSA) and other legislation on policing amongst intense community pressure to reform the police. Toronto and Ontario government inquiries in 1989, 1992, 1995, and 2007 continued to document systemic racism within law enforcement and identified the need for fully independent, civilian oversight of the complaints process (Landau Reference Landau1996, 296). There are currently three arms-length, civilian oversight bodies in Ontario: the Special Investigations Unit (formed in 1990), the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency (LECA, or the re-named OIPRD, formed in 2007), and the Inspectorate of Policing (formed in 2019). There is also an administrative, disciplinary body (Government of Ontario 2019). Significant doubts remain about the efficacy of these oversight bodies (Hodgkinson et al. Reference Hodgkinson, Caputo and Martino2024; Kwon and Wortley Reference Kwon and Wortley2022; McMahon Reference McMahon1988; Landau Reference Landau, Goldsmith and Lewis2000; Puddister and McNabb Reference Puddister and McNabb2024). And as Rinaldo Walcott (Reference Walcott2021) argues, police reform strategies, including civilian oversight of policing, fail because “they do not replace the foundational imperative of modern policing: the management of Black people” (49).
We similarly caution against the assumption that civilian review boards will hold police more accountable for racism. As we have begun to show, “bringing in” public members, specifically those from Black and other racialized groups, to advise on or make recommendations addressing racist police violence serves as the “anti” racism act(s) or, as Ahmed (Reference Ahmed2019) might suggest, proof of Metro and former Toronto being “good” at race equality (diversity, equity, inclusion, etc.), again, without actually needing to take action against racism at the hands of police. We argue that bringing Others in via a civilian review board, incorporated to review and address public complaints about police conduct and especially to hold police accountable for racialized police violence, will (re-)produce the same discursive acts we found replicated over and over again in Toronto’s history.
Conclusion: How Much has Changed?
Between 2017 and 2023, the Ontario Human Rights Commission initiated a full public inquiry into racial profiling of Black persons at the hands of Metro Toronto Police. On August 10, 2020, the OHRC released the second interim report reviewing Metro Police data from 2013 to 2017, which clearly showed that despite all changes to the civilian review process and other related processes:
-
Black people are more likely to be arrested by the Toronto police.
-
Black people are more likely to be charged and over-charged by the Toronto Police.
-
Black people are more likely to be struck, shot or killed by the Toronto police.” (Ontario Human Rights Commission 2020, 2).
In addition, as they prepared the final report for release in December 2023, the OHRC announced that they would continue to consult with “Black community members about the damaging effects of policing issues…[over] the same issues we have heard for over four decades” (Ontario Human Rights Commission 2021, para. 4, authors’ emphasis).
The killing of Albert Johnson and the ensuing mass protests that occurred across Toronto were the catalysts for Metro and former Toronto to further institutionalize the presence and political participation of racialized Others as a mechanism through which to (re)secure, ironically, the growing absence of racism in the City. In other words, racialized violence at the hands of police inevitably served to reproduce the City of Toronto as a place without racism. In addition, because variations of Toronto Councils have over time made hundreds, if not thousands, of recommendations on how to address racism the outside (in this case, in policing), they are intimately involved in building the reputation of Toronto as the diverse city. A fundamental irony exists at the heart of this mythology: even as the City of Toronto’s continued commitment to documentation, consultation, and remonstration regarding racism is re-circulated as discursive “proof” of its excellence in anti-racism and as evidence of Toronto being a racially harmonious, diverse space, the City-as-institution is endlessly reproducing mechanisms for the racial categorization, management, and policing of Toronto’s racialized communities. The effective function of these processes is to perform a discursive channeling: to limit the horizons of identifiable targets and proposable solutions with terms friendly to power. Continued efforts to “bring in” Others should be assessed in light of this conclusion.
Contributions of the Study
Scholars observe that, despite discourses recirculating both Canada and its major urban hub, Toronto, as racially harmonious, multicultural utopias, racism remains pervasive and deeply embedded in government policies and practices (Ahmadi Reference Ahmadi2018; Gross Reference Gross, Hambleton and Gross2007; Joy and Vogel Reference Joy and Vogel2015; Mullings Reference Mullings, Westhues and Wharf2021; Valverde Reference Valverde2012). Mullings et al. (Reference Mullings, Morgan and Quelleng2016) describe how the “narcissistic outlook” (22) on what Canada stands for in terms of human rights and in a global context masks how the Canadian State and its policies were built on and continue to perpetuate systemic racism and racial violence. Boudreau et al. (Reference Boudreau, Keil and Young2009) similarly argue that “diversity has become so central to the identity of the City of Toronto, both locally and in a global context, that any threat to this harmonious image is silenced” (95). Black and Indigenous people continue to be disproportionately targeted by Toronto police and overrepresented in the criminal justice system in Canada more broadly; as Mensah et al. (Reference Mensah, Firang, Williams and Afrifah2021) write, the “discursive field marked by state-centric moral claims” (64) of fairness and race-neutrality, coupled with the recirculation of familiar, white supremacist ideologies that mark Others as “naturally” violent and criminal, make the racial nature of the carceral system difficult to expose and challenge.
Our study of the Albert Johnson killing as an “event” allowed us to trace not only the early continuities, reversals, and oppositional knowledges of Toronto governments’ burgeoning discourses of diversity and racial innocence, but also how these discursive framings continued to build and intensify through specific “anti” racism practices of the State, including report-writing and bringing Others in to consult on issues of police racism. As we discovered, Toronto governments’ “anti” racism gestures and claims of innocence also intensified regardless of what (if any) actions were taken to address police racism. Our larger project, an analysis of what government-led consultations to address racism across time actually do, seeks to unearth and illuminate what other “events” might prop up discourses of diversity, racial harmony, and innocence in the City, with a view to understanding the multiple, fractured, and complex ways in which race, racism, power, and innocence are reproduced.
Mullings (Reference Mullings, Westhues and Wharf2021) also writes that racism continues in Canada and Toronto despite there being many government policies purporting to combat racial discrimination. Mele (Reference Mele2017), for example, shows how Toronto urban planning and development policies seeking to address racism in the process of redeveloping low-income, minority communities such as Regent Park via the promotion of “social mixing” produce, sustain, and protect a distinctly urban neoliberalism, upheld by racialization and selective applications of diversity aimed at redeeming the urban, racialized poor. In addition, as Mullings (Reference Mullings, Westhues and Wharf2021) notes, racism permeates even the various bodies created by governments explicitly to address harms caused by institutional racism. For example, Human Rights Commissions as well as Human Rights Tribunals in Canada, set up to investigate race-related complaints and ensure compliance with Canadian anti-discriminatory and human rights policies, all have mostly white, male adjudicators drawn from the very systems Black, Indigenous, and other racialized people experience violence in, such as the criminal justice system, government, and law. This often leads to “constructing a guilty complainant, normalizing racism, and accepting negative descriptions and categorization of complainants” (105).
As noted earlier, we caution against the assumption that an independent, civilian review of Metro Police will wholly address racialized police violence. Following Mullings (Reference Mullings, Westhues and Wharf2021), we also argue that racial ideologies and stereotyping that normalize complainants as “difficult,” “unlikable,” having “attitude problems,” “behavioural issues,” or worse might also inform the proceedings of an independent civilian review board, resulting in re-traumatization of victims of racialized police violence and/or their families and communities. In fact, the media discourse following the Albert Johnson killing reproduced similar ideologies of race; Jamaica, where Johnson immigrated to Canada from, is described as an uncivilized and backwards nation: “The small villages and urban slums of Jamaica give rise to large numbers of religious eccentrics. Nurtured, on the Bible, driven by poverty, they look to Armageddon and maintain an uneasy relationship with the authorities of this world” (Littman Reference Littman1980, B4). The Globe and Mail, a so-called “progressive” newspaper in Canada, engaged in the same practice, repeatedly describing Johnson as “the volatile Jamaican” (Gooding Reference Gooding1979, 2). Comments made by the President of the Police Association Mal Connoly in the aftermath of the Johnson case also include that “The problem seems to be more or less with the Black community. Those I would classify as leaders of the community should come in and talk to us rather than inciting problems with their totally irresponsible claims and accusations” (Gooding Reference Gooding1979, 2). The assumption that racial ideologies and stereotypes of this nature are a part of our “unfortunate” past—that they no longer exist in a now-multicultural Canada and/or diverse, racially harmonious Toronto—draws directly from the very discursive framings we have shown to be simultaneously occlusive and invested in the continuation of racism.
In his critique of multicultural approaches, Saloojee (Reference Saloojee2003) asserts that real anti-racism efforts in the City of Toronto would mean moving beyond a simple recognition of “Othered” identities to creating policies promoting the full participation and inclusion of racialized communities in the life of the City. However, Bannerji (Reference Bannerji2000), Dhaliwal (Reference Dhaliwal and Trend1996), Hall (Reference Hall1997), Hooks (Reference Hooks1992), Thobani (Reference Thobani2007), and many others have for years argued that (more) racial inclusion in the State only reinforces the narratives, authority, power, belonging, and/or capitalist accumulation of white (Western) bodies. Our study of the Albert Johnson killing takes these critiques of inclusion one step further by beginning to trace exactly how and under what terms racial inclusion might facilitate racist futures. However, we hesitate to make the claim that all forms of racial inclusion in the State and other institutions necessitate the reproduction of race and racism. Are there specific “events,” specific claims, specific time periods, and/or specific bodies that have brought about political or racial change in the City? Our larger study seeks to discover the nuances, the “grey” areas, and the ruptures and to also understand what these “events,” moments, and/or bodies do and mean, both in terms of racial progress in the City and for political activism on issues of racism.
Initiated in the local context of the City of Toronto, the findings of this paper and of the larger study are also intended to contribute to a global reservoir of critical knowledge and strategies addressing the intersections of race and racism, institutional discourses and practices, and the maintenance of power in multiple contexts, including government and the academy. Following Ahmed (Reference Ahmed2012), we thus invite others, in whatever institutional spaces they might occupy across the globe, to also trace what diversity and other discourses claiming racial harmony, progress, and/or innocence do and under what terms. When we trace, illuminate, and share from our specific locations, we can begin to understand the complex ways racial discourses manifest and evolve, and then begin to collectively disrupt and/or dismantle the practices that prop them up.
Funding statement
This work was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada under Grant number 430-2020-00788.
Competing interests
The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
Open access
