Speakers
John Sewell
Co-ordinator, Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, former Mayor of TorontoStart
February 5, 2015 - 12:00 am
End
Of all government functions, the public probably knows less about policing than about any other. We have little sense about:
- What police do: how many arrests does the average officer make each month?
- How they spend their time: Surely not just in Tim Horton’s!
- Whether their strategies are successful at preventing crime: does police patrol serve any useful function?
- How police are governed: do Police Service Boards play any useful role?
- How police are selected and trained: does it help getting hired if you have life experience?
- Whether racial discrimination is a factor in police work.
- Whether police actions have reduced crime in Canada.
- Why the cost of policing keeps going up.
- Why our elected officials almost never talk about policing issues.
Those are some of the questions I will try to provide some enlightenment on in this session, with as many references to local policing as I am able to find. I’m hoping to make people interested in being as usefully critical about policing as we are about land use planning, waste and recycling, and traffic.
Of all government functions, the public probably knows less about policing than about any other. We have little sense about:
- What police do: how many arrests does the average officer make each month?
- How they spend their time: Surely not just in Tim Horton’s!
- Whether their strategies are successful at preventing crime: does police patrol serve any useful function?
- How police are governed: do Police Service Boards play any useful role?
- How police are selected and trained: does it help getting hired if you have life experience?
- Whether racial discrimination is a factor in police work.
- Whether police