Black people face ‘disproportionately’ high charge, arrest rates from Toronto police: report

“The results … are highly disturbing, and confirm what Black communities have said for decades — that Black people bear a disproportionate burden of law enforcement,” the commission said in a news release.

The study found that although Black people make up only 8.8 per cent of Toronto’s population, they represent almost 32 per cent of people charged, while white people and other racialized groups were underrepresented.

The report also found that only a fifth of all charges laid in that time frame resulted in a conviction, but charges against Black people were more likely to be withdrawn and less likely to result in a conviction, which the commission says “raises systemic concerns about charging practices.”

The data analyzed by the OHRC also shows that Black people represent 38 per cent of people charged with marijuana offences, despite conviction rates and studies showing they use cannabis at similar rates to white people.

“The time for debate about whether anti-Black bias exists is over. The OHRC calls on the TPS, TPSB, the City of Toronto and the Government of Ontario to take immediate action to address systemic and anti-Black racism in policing and to respect and protect racialized people in Toronto,” said Ena Chadha, OHRC interim chief commissioner, in a statement.

“It is time to make transformative changes in the institutions and systems of law enforcement that produce such disparate outcomes — community trust and safety, especially the safety of Black lives, depend on it.”

‘None of the findings … are a shock’

Racial justice lawyer Anthony Morgan, manager of the City of Toronto’s Confronting Anti-Black Racism Unit, said at Monday’s news conference that Black communities and their allies don’t need another report showing the systemic problems with policing in Toronto.

“None of the findings in these reports are a shock or really a surprise,” Morgan said.

Instead, he said, this report is for policy makers, politicians and people in positions of power in the justice system, and he hopes it will be discussed at length by people in those roles.

The report also found that Black people represented 34 per cent of people involved in single-charge “out-of-sight” driving charges like driving without insurance, which lead researcher and University of Toronto professor Scot Wortley noted could only be discovered by police observing the race of a driver or stopping and questioning a driver. 

Black people were also involved in 25 per cent of all investigations from the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which probes incidents of death, serious injury or allegations of sexual assault, the report found.

They were also involved in 39 per cent of cases involving “low-level” use of force, which doesn’t meet the SIU’s threshold.

‘They are Black lives, and Black lives matter’

At a news conference Monday morning, Chadha said it’s important to remember that these numbers are more than just statistics.

“They are Black lives, and Black lives matter,” she said.

Wortley said a perception exists that Black people end up in interactions with police at disproportionate rates because of their involvement with guns and gangs.

“Our data challenges this stereotype,” he said.

Instead, the data found that most use-of-force incidents involve unarmed civilians with no criminal record. Few cases involved a gun — but many cases involved people in a mental health crisis or suffering from addiction issues.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.