Editorial

Community policing:
Within the context of racialized communities.

It has been almost 18 years since the Rodney King beating sparked the Los Angeles riots followed by the May 1992 Yonge Street riot. The Toronto riot brought our attention to the racialization of poverty and numerous oppressive issues that African Canadians face on a daily basis. The riots perhaps prompted a great amount of soul-searching analysis among the academics, politicians, policy makers and the police; however no broad anti-racism initiatives emerged.

Some issues that did arise from that period included the racialization of poverty, police brutality and racial profiling. To address these serious allegations, the Toronto Police Service begun a dialogue with the communities they serve. As a result community policing, a fiery issue since its inception in the 1980s, perhaps became a viable solution of policing the racialized communities. The Toronto Police is mandated and responsible for protecting lives and property of its residents, preventing and detecting crime, and safeguarding peace and order.

Community policing has emerged in Toronto as a means of dealing with and preventing crime. This concept envisions a method of engagement between the police and the community, and its nucleus is the recognition that by working with the community, law enforcement agencies may find local solutions to local problems.
The notion of community policing has probably reached the higher echelons of the police department because of its promise of creating a collaborative partnership between the community and the police service. This undertaking is premised and grounded on a more proactive style of policing and dealing with problems before they result serious harm and damage to people.

Community policing has noteworthy advantages to the racialized communities. It will mobilize, rally, and empower the community to address and raise issues that concern them. It will also enhance the relationship between the police and the racialized community. The increase and frequency of contact will begin to build bridges between the police and the African Canadian community. This again will hopefully result in greater trust and collaboration. The police will positively benefit from this endeavour by increasing their knowledge and awareness of the local communities’ struggles, fears and lifestyle.

This cultural understanding will undoubtedly improve the officers’ skills in forging positive relationships with the communities they police and will reduce the antagonism, hostility, mistrust and fear that may exist between two diverse groups (one group with significant power and the other group seeking equity). This initiative will enrich the local officer’s satisfaction of their daily work. Eventually, both the police and the community will reap mutual benefits by means of reduced crime and implementation of crime prevention strategies that meets the needs of the community.

Why then has community policing not yet been fully implemented across Toronto? There are probably several factors that impede and hinder the full implementation of this significant change in policing. The foremost is resistance to change in both the police force and the community members. Change always threatens the usual and comfortable ways of handling human interactions, and particularly giving up power to attain a shared goal. Another hurdle is the vast difference in terms of values, beliefs and discursive practices that subsist between the police and the neighbourhoods it serves. The Police Service has their own set of values accumulated from hundreds of years of policing, and some of these ideals may conflict with the contemporary reality of multi-ethnic, diverse, and cosmopolitan city of Toronto.

Despite the existences of many challenges, the notion of community policing appears to have matured and appealed to Police Chief Blair, and that to keep our communities safe means stopping crime before it happens. This is where the concept of community policing derives and draws its strength. Our conversation with Superintendent Ron Taverner of 23 Division, made it clear that Chief Blair is determined to lead a police force that respect diversity and immune from prejudice and discrimination of any kind.

To ensure the safety of the citizens and residents of Toronto, a compromise between the police and the community is very vital. A compromise that guarantees that the police need to fulfill their duties of combating crime without interferences by the community, and that the police need to open up venues where it not only partners with the residents but involve them in decision making processes. This conciliation is the first step of fully implementing the community policing model.

We live in a diverse and democratic society, and the measure of truly living in such a society is the protection accorded to the minority’s rights, human dignity and ability to carry on their lives without fear and prejudice. The hallmark of any successful pluralistic nation is its ability to guarantee the human rights of all its citizenry, and above all the conduct and means it treats its minorities. Let us all pursue the ideals of social justice and work towards the creation of equity based communities.

Said Y. Dirie, MSW
Editor , Immigrant Post Magazine

e-mail: editor@immigrantpost.ca