Denise Hansen examines the Black Lives Matter movement in Canada—and why there’s cause for anger and hope here, too

PROTESTS AND MARCHES AND SIT-INS have never really been my chosen course of social action. I can remember my dear family friend Kathy, a valiant social justice advocate, trying over the years to introduce my tender, elementary-aged sister and me to the world of social action. She’d drag us to women’s marches and tuition rallies but somehow, we always became so besieged by the noise and the cold (this is Canada, after all) that after a mere hour we’d end up at the nearest Tim Horton’s, clutching hot chocolates and talking through alternative ways we could create social change. Still today, I deeply admire the committed and resilient spirit of protestors (and my dear family friend for fearlessly trying to involve us in that world!) but have decided that for me, social justice is best pursued in other ways. So I write.
But that was before Michael Brown.

The night it was announced that a St. Louis County grand jury had decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, I was in bed under the covers, glued to the light of my phone, slowly scrolling through news report upon news report, tears falling down my face at the same pace. I fell asleep that night feeling emotionally shattered, and like nothing mattered. It was an indescribable feeling of despair with society that I had never experienced before.

The same week I, along with hundreds of other Torontonians, converged at the U.S. Consulate General in downtown Toronto to express anger and frustration with the non-indictment decision and to protest the systemic oppression black communities both in America and here at home continue to face at the hands of police and the state. At the end of the rally, organizers asked us to turn to the person next to us, take our hand, place it on their back, and say the words “I got your back.” I biked home that cold November night feeling everything but what I had felt earlier that week. The protest made me feel that I, my community: we mattered.
I think there comes a time in every black person’s life where the straw simply breaks. You take it and you take it, and you take it and you see your family take it and your friends take it, and people you don’t even know take it, until one day the load becomes too much. For millions of people, that day came with the events surrounding Michael Brown and Ferguson. A year after Brown’s death and the #BlackLivesMatter protests (unofficially) began, I wanted to find out how far the Black Lives Matter movement had come in turning hearts and minds—in America and here at home—to the supposedly revolutionary idea that black life does, in fact, matter.
Does my black life matter more now, one year later?

PEOPLE OFTEN QUESTION what it was about the Michael Brown shooting that spurred millions of people around the world, black and otherwise, to pay heed to the unjust policing practises afforded to black communities in America. After all, since Trayvon Martin’s death in February 2012 and before Michael Brown’s death in August 2014,countless unarmed people of colour have been killed by police in the
U.S. These are just some of the names of black individuals that were killed by police or vigilantes only one month after Trayvon Martin died: Raymond Allen (age 34), Dante Prince (age 25), Nehemiah Dillard (age 29), Wendall Allen (age 20), Shereese Francis (age 30), Rekia Boyd (age 22), Kendrec McDade (age 19), and Ervin Jefferson (age 18).

“The community response set things off, the way people in Ferguson decided to rise up and come together as a community,” says 25-year-old Tiffany Smith, explaining what galvanized America around Michael Brown. “That really showed all of us that we could do the same.” Seeing the courage of the Ferguson community to come together and revolt spread action like wildfire across the U.S., she adds. She herself has been part of the Black Lives Matter movement since it began last year, protesting and organizing in Atlanta, Georgia.

After Brown’s death, protestors flooded the streets of Ferguson and other cities across America. When the first report came out of Ferguson that police tear-gassed peaceful protestors, the community, understandably, retaliated. In response, President Barack Obama addressed the nation and urged an “open and transparent investigation” into Brown’s death while calling for calm and restraint. But then Officer Darren Wilson’s name was released. National protests intensified, calling for police reform and the immediate arrest of Wilson. A state of emergency was declared in Ferguson. Every night as I turned on the news, I knew I was watching a revolution unfold before me.

As protests strengthened, the Black Lives Freedom Rides—organized by the same three women who began the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag—reportedly brought more than 500 activists from around the country and Canada to Ferguson to join thousands others for Labour Day actions and protests. Highways were stopped, football and baseball games and symphonies were disrupted, Walmarts were shut down, and hundreds of protestors staged die-ins in cities across the country. Black Lives Matter made its way into my conversation circles with friends, colleagues, and people on the street. I felt like a kid in a candy store when the subject came up. For the first time, I was discussing race relations—no! I was discussing anti-black racism!—with people I had known for years. Please, please, please let us hold on to this moment a little while longer, I thought.

In November, with the nation bracing for the Michael Brown grand jury decision, the city of Ferguson became a military war zone with police outfitted in riot gear, body armour, tear gas, and other militarized crowd control items. When the devastatingly predictable nonindictment decision was announced, thousands of people rallied to protest the verdict in more than 170 cities across America and massive protests were launched, shutting down malls and highways to boycott Black Friday.

“But what does asking poor, black families to stop shopping on Black Friday do?” my American friend asked me one day, referring to the Black Friday shopping boycotts. “These are the same families that, because of generations of systemic racism and oppression and as a result, limited financial means and economic wealth, are just trying to save a couple of dollars on their kids’ Christmas presents.” She made a good point. We talked for hours more about protest, boycott, and its place in revolution.

Then in December, another injustice made it to news broadcast. It was announced that a New York grand jury would not indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the death of Eric Garner, a 350-or-sopound, asthmatic, married father of six, who was harassed, mobbed, and eventually died at the hands of police via chokehold for selling cigarettes. I was getting ready for work the morning I heard the news. Listening to the audio of Garner desperately plead for his life is something that will stay with me forever. Shaken, I turned the radio off halfway through the audio, only able to muster up the courage to watch the full video a couple of days later.

The Garner non-indictment announcement incited a surge of protests in New York City and across the nation. Basketball teams donned “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts at games; a Black Lives Matter protest filled the Mall of America; and black congressional staffers walked out of Congress staging a powerful “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protest. I felt a strange sense of relief when incidents of police violence were still making the evening news and daily newspapers. How strange it is to feel relief when black people—my community—were still the victims of violence and death at the hands of police. But I guess I was just relieved that the struggle still mattered enough to popular media.

With the start of 2015, the most powerful image: a diverse crowd of over 50,000 people marched through New York City. Titled the Millions March NYC, it brought together people of all races, ages, and backgrounds to protest ongoing state-sanctioned violence against black communities. Thousands upon thousands of people protesting anti-black racism; these were images I had never seen in Canada, outside of school textbooks during Black History Month. Then in Baltimore this spring, more outrage as people poured into the streets after 25-year-old Freddie Gray died in police custody after being illegally arrested and detained.

In so many ways, it has been a defining and transformative movement highlighting North America’s fractured race relations and broken criminal justice system. In just one year, the movement has been able to bring international awareness to the systemic dehumanization of blackness that occurs at the hands of the state, most visibly by the police, every day, every hour, and every minute. Similar in size and scope to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Black Lives Matter has brought race relations and the heartbreaking understanding of how disposable black life is in America to the fore.

Even in places as far away as Australia, Japan, Palestine, the U.K., Cuba, and the West Indies, Black Lives Matter has mobilized people not just to take to the streets in solidarity but also, and more importantly, has mobilized international communities to examine their own practises of policing, race relations, and anti-black racism. Outside of the important conversations it has sparked, Black Lives Matter has seen successes in the policy arena too. In less than one year the movement has seen seven bills aimed at police regulation and accountability introduced to Congress including the Jury Reform Act, the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, the Right to Know Act, and the End Racial Profiling Act. A federal civil rights investigation has been launched in the death of Eric Garner and its subsequent grand jury decision. The U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation into the conduct of the Ferguson Police Department and found that the force regularly engaged in conduct that violated the constitutional rights of its black residents (the Department of Justice is now investigating police conduct in other U.S. cities including Baltimore, North Charleston, Cleveland, Albuquerque, and St. Louis).

In August 2014, a petition to create the Michael Brown law, which requires all state, county, and local police to wear a body camera, received well over 100,000 signatures (the threshold required for the Obama administration to respond). The petition also spurred the NYPD to equip police officers with body cameras for a three-month pilot program, have 7,000 body cameras supplied to the LAPD over a two-year period, and have President Obama propose a plan that includes funding over 50,000 body cameras for American law enforcement. The Death in Custody Reporting Act was signed into law and we saw rightful police indictments retained in the deaths of Rekia Boyd, Levar Jones, Bernard Bailey, as well as six police officers indicted in the death of Freddie Gray.

On the grassroots level too, Black Lives Matter has triumphed. Protestors have been able to create and distribute resource toolkits for organizing protests and other actions; nationwide, conferences have been hosted; conference calls regularly occur between groups across the country to share actions and next steps; and Black Lives Matter organizers named 2015 the Year of Resistance. Taken together, we are seeing how, in just one year, grassroots community work can directly shape and inform public policy work.

“That report that came out about Ferguson of how black folks are over-policed,” says Smith, who believes that Black Lives Matter has highlighted the importance of data and the power of information. “That report would have never come out if people weren’t in the streets.”

Rick Jones is lawyer and a founding member of the Neighbourhood Defender Service of Harlem. The NDS is a community-based public defence practice which provides legal representation to residents of Harlem and other historically underserved and over-policed communities in north Manhattan where it’s not uncommon for some of his clients to be stopped by police two to three times a week. Jones agrees that what Black Lives Matter has done best is bridge the worlds of policy and protest (although he’s not sure it’s yet been successful). In his own work, he notes that the action that Black Lives Matter in New York City did to protest Stop-and-Frisk on the streets concretely helped in highlighting the work NDS and other practices did around
Stop-and-Frisk litigation at the policy level.

When I ask Jones how the Black Lives Matter movement has impacted the work NDS does, he tells me, “We’ve been able to help our clients understand that the constitution applies to them, to help them understand that it’s not okay for the police to just throw you up against the wall and go through your pockets for no reason.” This is important work, he stresses, adding that when generational oppression is present—“granddad was oppressed and dad was oppressed and now son is oppressed”—this education becomes a lot more difficult. Even in a country like America where race is talked about often, making the connection between people’s personal struggles to systemic injustices becomes hard because racism has been the status quo for so many generations.

Even harder is asking these same communities to act and expose themselves to a system (police, etc.) that has wronged them in the first place. Black Lives Matter is so remarkable because it has done both: made the link between individual disenfranchisement and systemic oppression and convinced affected communities the fight is worth it. Yet, then, what happens in a place like Canada where race and anti-black racism is almost never talked about? How has Black Lives Matter permeated the Canadian landscape? Has it at all?

ONE YEAR POST-FERGUSON Black Lives Matter has been instrumental in providing Canadian justice organizations and black groups legitimacy when speaking out about how our own black communities are treated by law enforcement. The protests and marches and sit-ins we saw planned by Black Lives Matter organizers across Canada came about not just to show solidarity for black men and women in America who contend with a racist criminal justice system, but also to protest and rally around the racial profiling, suspicion, and institutional anti-blackness that is present in Canadian policing practices.

“In Canada, we maintain a kind of smugness so that when we talk about police and black communities, often we revert to experiences going on in the States,” says Anthony Morgan, a lawyer at the African Canadian Legal Clinic, a not-for-profit organization that advocates for and represents African-Canadians in a number of legal forums. Morgan asserts that the movement has created space to acknowledge how Canada’s black communities experience policing institutions and practises. To him, Black Lives Matter has allowed Canada to critically assess the Special Investigator’s Unit (SIU.), a civilian law enforcement agency that conducts independent investigations to determine whether a criminal offence took place whenever police officers become involved in incidents when someone has been seriously injured, dies, or alleges sexual assault.

Morgan says Black Lives Matter has also allowed us to critically assess the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), an independent civilian oversight agency that receives, manages, and oversees all complaints about police in Ontario. And it has especially engaged people in critically assessing the issue of carding, the practise whereby Toronto police officers stop, question, and collect information on people without arresting them.

While black communities make up only 8.3 percent of Toronto’s population, they accounted for 25 percent of the cards filled out between 2008 and mid-2011. Research shows that in each of Toronto’s 72 patrol zones, blacks are more likely than whites to be stopped and carded and the likelihood increases in areas that are predominantly white. This in Canada’s most multicultural city and a global beacon of what a post-racial society looks like.

Morgan adds that the Black Lives Matter movement has also been effective in raising awareness about the SIU and how many times it has exonerated a police officer who has killed a civilian. Black people are overrepresented in these encounters as well. Jermaine Carby, a black Toronto man, was shot and killed by police last year after being pulled over by police for unknown reasons. Rather than providing answers and support to the Carby family, the SIU is still withholding the suspect officer’s name and details of the incident. “What systems do we have here in Canada that try and justify or explain the killing, harassment, and violence black civilians experience at the hands of police?” asks Morgan. “These are important questions that we’ve finally been able to get at.”

THE SUCCESS OF BLACK LIVES MATTER has had as much to do with its origins as its message. Here is a movement that began as grassroots in nature, had its origins in female leaders and youth, lacked centralized leadership, and used social media as an organizing tool. By virtue of all these characteristics, the movement has wildly succeeded. Black Lives Matter has also wildly succeeded because of its universal message— Black Lives Matter. It’s not only a powerful message, but one that is easily understandable and irrefutably cannot be denied. “One of the realities of protest movements is that unless those who are protesting frame their protest in a way that is not threatening and that is easily understood by the very society that is oppressing them, the protests don’t go anywhere,” explains Ken Coates, Canada Research Chair of Regional Innovation and author of #IdleNoMore: And the Remaking of Canada. In his book, Coates argues that the basic assertion of #IdleNoMore as aboriginal people engaging with their identity and feeling empowered to be a part of the future of Canada was a success in its own right.

“It’s hard for governments and the public at large,” he adds, “to ignore movements that start off with an assertion that cannot be rejected.”

The Black Lives Matter movement has worked in much the same way. Protestors have found a concept that no sensible person can reject. In this way, when government or policing institutions don’t deny that black lives matter, they at the same time are forced to question why then they continue to over-police and over-criminalize black communities; or why they continue to use poor, black populations as revenue tools; or in Toronto, why they continue to unduly target young black men in carding stops (though the city’s mayor recently vowed to end the practice). If black lives matter, why continue to apply these unjust practises to black communities? With three simple words, the Black Lives Matter movement has exposed the hypocrisies and, thus, has been able to rally for change.

“The protestors won as soon as they started organizing,” explains Coates who says that Black Lives Matter protests have spurred a similar paradigm of revolution to Idle No More, where people were equally as excited about being aboriginal and showing their country that aboriginal people were alive, engaged, vibrant as they were ready to assert their presence. “In the same way, Black Lives Matter is as much a conversation among African Americans as it is with African- Americans and the rest of the American population,” he adds. “And that part is really powerful.”

Arguably, the greatest success of the Black Lives Matter movement is that it has made people excited about being black again—a feeling we haven’t seen since the 1960s in America, or in Canada, ever. One year later, Black Lives Matter is and continues to be a powerful assertion of black identity and confidence whereby black communities, especially young black people, have found their voice, realized the future of their communities lay in their hands, and have demanded public attention in this regard. “Black folks who may have not thought about their lives as something that mattered are now reminded,” says Smith, who adds that when Michael Brown was killed, it opened up a new space for young, black activists who saw their involvement in the movement as an act of necessity. “For me being a part of this movement is about my livelihood. I felt like how can I not be a part of this? Black Lives Matter encompasses all of my lived experience: as a black person, as a woman, as a queer person. For me, Black Lives Matter has been this constant reminder that I do matter.”

Popular media feeds us so much bad news coming out of the black community: our crime rates, our lack of involvement in the economic, social, or political dimensions of the wider (whiter) society. In the face of one of these bad news pieces —the excessive violence and death of black individuals at the hands of police—Black Lives Matter has, in Lauryn Hill’s words, turned a negative into a positive picture. It has reminded black people of the simple notion that we do matter. In just one year, the movement has turned the tragic and violent death of Michael Brown into a sense of shared identity and purpose for millions of black people across America, here at home, and across the world.

I remember that cold, November night biking home from a Black Lives Matter protest feeling like I, my community: we mattered. Many gains have been made by Black Lives Matter, but even if the movement does have a long way to go in reforming policy, transforming the school-to-prison pipeline and creating equal opportunities for black populations across social, economic, and political dimensions, thanks to Black Lives Matter, I know my life matters. More than I did last year. And millions more do too.

I matter. A simple and most powerful revolution. If this is just one year in, the Black Lives Matter revolution has only just begun.

How Ontario’s failed police accountability system lets our authorities get away with systemic abuse of society’s most vulnerable populations

When Greg Spoon accepted a beer from a friend on Monday, May 3, 2010, he can’t have imagined what would happen. The 40-year-old Lakota Sioux man, known as “Iggy,” is soft-spoken, personable, and articulate according to friends, “when sober and in a good space.” He also suffers from serious Type 2 diabetes and has lived on the streets of Toronto for the better part of a decade. That May evening, he was hanging around Sanctuary, a well-frequented drop-in center for those in need, on Charles Street in downtown Toronto. His friend had taken the beer from what appeared to be an abandoned backpack. When the owner of the bag returned, passersby called the police. Soon Spoon was charged with theft, handcuffed, and allegedly beaten by police during what witnesses said was a diabetic seizure. He spent the night in a cell in 52 Division.

It’s no secret that Toronto’s most marginalized, including people who are unemployed, under-housed, or struggling with their physical or mental health, have often been on the receiving end of police misconduct. The most recent Toronto Street Health report in 2007 showed that one in eight homeless respondents, like Spoon, had experienced police violence over the past year in the form of direct physical assault. Three quarters of those in the Street Health report did not file a formal complaint, and nearly half said they were afraid of the repercussions should they lodge a complaint—something Spoon initially also feared. The same number said they didn’t feel a complaint would achieve anything.

“We have two solitudes in Toronto,” says Anna Willats from her office at George Brown College where she is coordinator for Women Transitioning to Trades.  There’s the experience of white, middle-class people who rarely encounter experience the police directly, she says, and then there’s everyone else—the latter of which experience patrols of their neighbourhoods and constant surveillance. A longtime activist and member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, Willats says the distinction is divided along race and class lines: “certain groups get more attention from police.”

In 2009, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director was created, in part, as a fix. At its most basic, the OIPRD’s mandate is to provide civilian oversight of officers in Ontario, and to curb the insular cycle of police investigating police. As an independent office, the OIPRD also allows complaints to be filed online and by a third party if needed, in theory making the complaint process more accessible to people, like Spoon, who might find it intimidating to file a complaint. In fact, of the roughly 3,500 complaints received every year, about 400 are third-person complaints. Despite such lofty goals, however, five years after its launch, promises of improved accessibility and civilian oversight are still coming up short—especially when it comes to justice for street-involved folk.

The Toronto Police Accountability Coalition reports that from 2010 to 2011 the OIPRD received about 4,000 complaints and dismissed 2,000 off the cuff.  Of the 2,000 they did review, only 26 (0.5 percent of all complaints) were substantiated and deemed serious.  By the end of that first year, just one case had lead to a non-criminal internal police disciplinary hearing, with two other hearings not yet started. In the other 23 serious, substantiated cases, there were no consequences at all. The OIPRD cost taxpayers $5.4 million for 2010-2011.

Today, the OIPRD is heavily criticized as a bureaucratic and understaffed system, still wedded to police culture. In September 2013, the Toronto-based Scadding Court Community Centre (SCCC) released a report that summarized comments heard in a forum it held the previous fall—the first time the OIPRD has been evaluated publicly since its initiation in 2009. Its conclusions were clear: the OIPRD needs to improve on basically everything, from its legal structures and its outreach, to its general procedures and investigation process. “It is clear that the majority of Ontarians do not even know what the OIPRD is,” says Alina Chaterjee, director of redevelopment, development and community engagement at SCCC who co-prepared the final report. “And if they do, are unclear on how to access their services.”

The police accountability system has been under review almost perpetually since public support for scrutinizing police behavior began to rise in the ’70s. The first police complaints system was launched on a trial basis in Toronto in 1981. The system established a Public Complaints Investigation Bureau and created the role of Public Complaints Commissioner, which was later changed to Police Complaints Commissioner (PCC), to review investigations. The system became permanent three years later, eventually expanding to include the rest of Ontario in 1990. It was killed not long after in 1996, however, by then provincial premier Mike Harris. In its last year of operation, the PCC only investigated 24 of 3,549 complaints.

From 1996 until the OIPRD, Ontario had no civilian oversight body to investigate public complaints about police conduct. During this time, complaints about the police were brought directly to the division. The force’s professional standards unit—the internal corrective and investigative body—would then deal with the complaint, if deemed serious enough. In 2002, the City of Toronto’s Auditor critiqued the paltry system for its lack of accountability; the system came under fire from the Ontario Human Rights Commission the following year.

In 2005, the Honorable Patrick LeSage, former Chief Justice of the Ontario Superior Court, released a thorough review of what was left of Ontario’s police complaints system. To complete the report, LeSage met with community groups and police from the province and held public meetings, hearing from over 200 individuals and 85 community groups between June–November 2004. Community groups critiqued the system for being “inherently difficult to navigate” and individuals said they felt intimidated making a complaint at a police station. People also reported being discouraged from making complaints by police. The result was The Independent Police Review Act, 2007, which mandated the creation of the OIPRD. The goal: accountability by way of civilian oversight.

Officially, the OIPRD is an arms-length agency of the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General. Unlike the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) of Ontario set up in 1990, which investigates cases that include sexual assault, homicide, and serious injury, and which can charge officers with a criminal offense, the OIPRD is essentially an administrator of employment law. As such, it deals with complaints like abuse of power and lower degrees of physical assault (one drop-in user reported being weight-lifted by a police officer by his handcuffs which left welts on his wrists, just out of sight of surveillance cameras, for instance).

The OIPRD’s nearly 50-person staff includes only 13 investigators—half former police and half civilians. Non-police investigators come from organizations such as the Ontario Public Guardian and Trustee, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, and the Ontario Ombudsman Office. The OIPRD oversees complaints against municipal and regional police services, as well as the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP)—yet investigates only a small number of complaints itself. For example, in 2012-2013, the OIPRD investigated a meager 119 conduct complaints but referred 1,316 back to the same police service where they originated. And, in the case of a substantiated complaint, it is still the chiefs of police who conduct the discipline or disciplinary hearings (which can result in a reprimand, suspension without pay, or dismissal).  “We still have a system,” says Willats, “where by and large the police investigate themselves.”

The OIPRD’s wobbly track record is especially problematic considering the recent rise in controversial police behavior, particularly in Ontario. For example, the OIPRD received a record 356 complaints after the Toronto 2010 G20 protests. According to a poll a year later, more than half of all Torontonians felt the police used undue force during the G20. In response to the uproar, the OIPRD released a comprehensive overview of police management of the event, which did little to silence critics. “It’s not really in dispute that there were massive rights violations [during the G20],” says Abby Deshman of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), which has been pushing for the resolution of many of the complaints, “the missing piece is accountability for individual officers.”

Yet, while the G20 laid the foundation for distrust of Toronto police, recent events have served to magnify it. During the past year, Toronto Police have repeatedly attracted negative attention: the shooting to death of 18-year-old Sammy Yatim and subsequent charge of a Toronto police officer with second degree murder; the assault conviction and subsequent scant 45-day sentence of Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani for his actions against G20 protester Adam Nobody; and the practice of officers carding racialized Toronto youth—not to mention the Rob Ford investigation. Most recently, the shooting of Michael MacIsaac by Durham Regional Police on December 2, 2013 reaffirmed the public’s call for de-escalation training for officers and increased deployment of mental health crisis intervention teams when dealing with psychiatric survivors.

On a Thursday night in November 2012 at Sanctuary, the drop-in is bustling with people here for the home cooked shepherd’s pie, nicknamed “God’s pie” by the cook. I’m here with Doug Johnson Hatlem, a 36-year-old staff worker. His hair is disheveled, and a faded, blue jean shirt hangs off his lean shoulders. He is slouched next to me in a black faux-leather chair. Hatlem looks relaxed, but his eyes are darting around, keeping tabs on who is coming and going out of this basement hang-out. The other day I witnessed Hatlem pry himself free of a drunken headlock. The drop-in center is loud with the clanking of dishes and conversation.

Hatlem introduces me to Jason Greig, who is also here for supper. It’s an unusually warm Toronto day for November; Greig’s wearing a tank-top that shows off his biceps. Since the food’s not yet being served, we walk outside together so Greig can smoke. We sit side by side on a concrete planter across from Sanctuary. It’s the same planter where Spoon was sitting before he was beaten. Grieg is part Anishnabek and says he has struggled with addiction ever since he was 11, when he witnessed his three year-old brother get run over by a car. In and out of prison for years, Greig has been out for about four months, his longest stretch of freedom in six years.

A friend of Greig’s wanders past us. “What’s goin’ on, my negro,” he says, giving Greig a firm hand-grab and pat on the back. Greig explains that he’s having a conversation about “when police don’t take responsibility for their actions.”   “Who, Po-Po?” his friend asks, laughing, “they don’t have to, they’ve got a badge.”

Greig, 40, tells me the story of that night when Spoon was beaten and Greig himself was charged with assault, for which he served 60 days in Toronto’s notorious Don jail. As Greig was walking down Charles Street by Sanctuary, a man he guesses was a little older than him called him over to the pay phone where he was standing and offered him a drink; “I said sure.” But Greig says the man soon propositioned him, asking how much it would cost to have him for the night. Greig told him: “More than you’ve got in your wallet,” at which point he says the man grabbed his crotch. Greig responded by hitting the man several times, after which he says the man ran away, leaving a backpack full of beer behind him. Soon after, Iggy and two friends who had been hanging out on a nearby bench checked out the bag and shared the beer.

Spoon is a well-known character around the drop-in, equal parts articulate artist and brazen alcoholic. “You’ve got to catch him on a good day,” I was advised. (Spoon agreed to be interviewed for this article, but did not show up to four appointed interview times over the course of two months.) Known for hollering in the street, Spoon’s speech is often slurred and he can appear drunk because of his diabetes, which requires regular insulin shots. It’s sometimes hard to know whether his behavior is a result of blood sugar level or blood alcohol level.  That night Iggy was having a diabetic seizure, says his friend “Seven,” who I met with while he was panhandling outside a nearby mall.

Police were called after the man Greig punched claimed he had been robbed. When four officers arrived at 10 p.m., Spoon was handcuffed for suspected robbery and did not resist arrest. Around the same time as the arrest, Greg Cook, a young staff worker at Sanctuary, was at his desk in a makeshift office at the top of the church that houses the drop-in. He began to hear yelling on the street below, and headed down. What he saw next compelled Cook, a missionary kid who grew up in South East Asia and self-described non-confrontational person, to shout.

Across the street, one of the police officers had grabbed Spoon, pushed him face down on the concrete and kicked him in the back more than five times, says Cook. “They had him in handcuffs and he was in the fetal position,” adds Seven, who witnessed the event.  About four or five police on bicycles and three cruisers were on the scene, accounting for about 10 officers. Cook shouted at the police to stop, at which point, he says, the officer “stopped kicking … and instead stood on Greg Spoon’s back with one foot.” Seven also said the police had stomped on Spoon’s head at least twice. As a roughed-up Spoon was driven away in a cruiser, Cook resolved to file a complaint with the OIPRD about police misconduct on his behalf. At first, Spoon feared police retaliation, but after a week or so, he gave Cook the okay.

Officer David Hopkinson of 51 Division in Toronto can’t resist a hardware analogy. During a coffee break at the Ontario Police Complaints System forum at Metro Hall in November 2012, I ask him to tell me his view on the OIPRD. “If you have a broken table, you can glue it, screw it, nail it or use duct tape, but if you use all four methods you know it’ll be solid,” he explains, “there’s more than one way to fix a problem.” (I try to imagine what my husband would say if I tried to fix a table with duct tape.) Hopkinson can see the doubt in my face and admits that the metaphor doesn’t totally work. The point, he says, is that there are four different ways a person can make a complaint about the police: through the Human Rights Commission, the OIPRD, the courts, or the SIU—and complainants need to keep trying until they find the right avenue.

The forum at Metro Hall is the first time the OIPRD has been examined in this way: with police, social workers, media, and the public coming together to have a discussion. Hatlem is here, and during question period addresses the panel, which includes Inspector Jeff Vibert and Inspector Reuben Stroble of professional standards. At the mic, Hatlem says he has no faith in the system and asks the panel to give him one reason why he should use the OIPRD (instead of the courts) when it comes to advocating on behalf of the homeless. Viber and Stroble frown. “If you’re not feeling like the people you are working with on the streets are getting the respect they deserve then you need to up the ante, okay?” says Viber. “And take the people who are treating those homeless people in a disrespectful manner and hold them accountable.” He pauses: “I must apologize. I wish we did a better job.”

Afterwards, Hopkinson strides over to Hatlem with a preacher’s fervor, cutting him off at the croissant and bagel table, now littered with empty cream cheese packets after the morning’s frenzy. “Can I offer you a different answer?” Hopkinson asks, launching into the duct tape table solution. Hatlem engages the officer for a minute but I can see he is edging his way past the cream cheese packets and plastic knives towards the coat rack.

Later, a young man who works with youth in Regent Park describes the everyday reality of the police-youth relationship. “Even my two-year-old doesn’t like police,” he says, adding he believes his community has never had any community efforts from police.  After he speaks, officer Hopkinson leans back in his chair and turns to the guy, pointing at him and motioning with the same evangelical fervor, “I’d like to talk to you afterwards,” he says in a low voice. After the discussion, the two men connect and Hopkinson later tells me he’ll be speaking at an upcoming Regent Park youth event. By all means, this is a man with good intentions.

Sylvana Capogreco, senior counsel at the OIPRD, also seems big on good intentions. After listening to complaints from all sides—social workers, the public, and the police, she addresses the crowd. She speaks like a long-suffering mother who has told her child again and again why, yes, they must go to school. The legislation put in place after the LeSage report is a “complex piece of legislation,” she explains slowly. “We are a neutral organization. We don’t represent the police. We don’t represent the public. We try to ensure that the rules that are in place from the legislation are followed.” She says they get a lot of complaints where people are just annoyed that they got a justified speeding ticket, for example— a complaint that would be dismissed for being “frivolous” or “vexatious.”

She responds to the critique of police investigating police with the same worn tone: “Even though the investigation is sent to the police service to investigate, when they send the investigative report back to our office we have dedicated staff who look at every,” pause, “single,” pause, “report.” Capogreco looks visibly lighter when she steps down from behind the podium. The message—is the system perfect? No, but we’re doing the best with what we have.

I catch up with officer Hopkinson after the forum. His bulletproof vest is slung over his boardroom chair. His radio lies idle on the table. Many of the officers at this event have used the idea that each person has their own truth; that there is perception and there is reality, and officer Hopkinson is no exception. “Perceptions are stronger than the truth,” he says when asked about the ongoing critique of so-called police culture, “it’s not the same as the movies.”

Several times, Hopkinson asserts that anyone in his position—including Anna Willats, who is representing the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition at the forum—would do his job the same way he does. I ask Hopkinson if he believes anything has changed with the introduction of the OIPRD five years ago. He waves a hand towards the PowerPoint presentation. “This means nothing,” he says, “anyone can complain about me … as long as they get my good side.” He believes police work puts people in uncomfortable situations and, because of that, the public is bound to complain. “I believe I’ve done everything right.”

Six months after Cook filed his complaint, he and Spoon had their answer: the claim was unsubstantiated. The OIPRD said other witnesses, including an Intelligarde security guard, four police officers, and four civilian witnesses, claimed the officers did not use excessive force. Cook requested a review, but again the matter was found to be unsubstantiated. Hatlem is still livid—particularly considering what he saw as false testimony from the security guards. Sanctuary staff and clients have both had run-ins with the guards before.

It’s now a Tuesday afternoon in November, 2012, during Sanctuary’s womens’ drop-in. Hatlem is stationed on a landing in the church stairwell, watching a surveillance mirror to make sure the women are left alone. I sit across from him on the stairs and lay my voice recorder on the newel post between us. A few minutes later, a drop-in user excuses himself as he pushes past us on the stairs. “Eh eh eh!” stammers Hatlem, retrieving my voice recorder. “It just slipped into my hand,” the guy shrugs, and Hatlem smiles broadly, “right.”

Hatlem has begun a push for greater police accountability to address the violence that the city’s marginalized often experience. With a sister who was on the street for years, he is known to be an outspoken advocate. He recently organized direct action training to help people living on the street deal with police after the Parkdale neighbourhood death of Chris Gardian in 2011, an alleged result of police violence. (Hatlem did all this on paternity leave). And, until his recent move to Chicago in June 2013, he also led monthly street memorials in downtown Toronto for homeless people; he continues to work on a co-operative documentary about police violence in Toronto.

While we sit, Hatlem tells me he filed his first third-person complaint with the OIPRD in 2011 after months of waiting for police to file charges against two security guards who assaulted Sanctuary drop-in users in February 2010. That night, one of Sanctuary’s interns, Aylish Chantler, was sitting with three drop-in users huddled in the doorway of a nearby parking garage, drinking to keep warm. Without warning, security guards appeared and aggressively ordered them to leave. Before they had a chance to move, one of the guards targeted one of the drop-in users, Chris Van Hert, repeatedly kicking and stomping on him. Police were called and Chantler reported what she had seen. Two of the homeless individuals were arrested and brought to 52 division; the security guards continued with their evening’s work. “It’s like a completely different standard of justice,” says Hatlem.

The drop-in staff alerted the media shortly after, and the CBC was on the scene that evening. As a result, the police took statements from the two homeless men, and released them instead of keeping them overnight. But then, recalls Hatlem, “they kept not filing the charges [against the security guards], not filing the charges, not filing the charges.” When Hatlem filed the complaint, the OIPRD investigator set up an informal meeting with representatives from Intelligarde, Sanctuary, and Van Hert, something Hatlem sees as a step in the right direction. However, during the meeting Van Hert was immediately blamed by the security guards for the event. Van Hert’s response gave the company pause: “It doesn’t matter what I did,” he said, “I didn’t deserve to be beat up like that.” When the OIPRD investigator still said he would not press charges, however, Van Hert left the meeting angry. Hatlem’s complaint was later deemed by the OIPRD “serious” but unsubstantiated.

After chatting with Hatlem, I accompany Sanctuary staff worker Cook on a “walkabout,” a check-in on clients from the drop-in both on the streets and at their homes. We shop for groceries for one drop-in user and deliver them to his place. The man is a paraplegic client who recently won a large sum through the Human Rights Tribunal (the “duct tape” solution Hopkinson mentioned) for mistreatment during the G20. An aimless kitten wanders ahead of us as we step off the lurching elevator. His small apartment is so dark, we can hardly see. Cook sighs, “I forgot to get light bulbs.”

The client greets us and Cook starts putting away groceries: Frosted Flakes, quick noodles, bananas, and chocolate chip ice cream. (Cook confided in me earlier he sometimes wants to throw in some brown bread, but respects the grocery lists he is given.) At one window, diffuse daylight filters through the sheet used as a curtain, illuminating light switches surrounded by dirt and electrical sockets that hang off the walls. The other window is boarded up and there is a broken bottle in the corner by the door. It’s sadly not surprising that such people—those living in the most difficult circumstances—are having difficulty getting justice through the system, including the OIPRD. “We hold officers responsible to not have a bad day,” says Willats. “[We do that] because they are dealing with people who are having a bad day—sometimes the worst day of their lives.”

For many advocates, an ideal society would not only have more effective and independent police complaints systems, but minimal policing. While Willats admits there are times when “muscle” is needed, she argues that using police in so many places—responding to people in mental health crises, as well as in schools, as counselors and hall monitors—leads to criminalization of whole groups of people. She’d prefer society work with kids from the word “go” to learn conflict resolution, de-escalation, and mediation. That way, she says, communities could be empowered to police themselves, and professional policing could be used as sparingly as possible. “I don’t think at the end of the day that this is about minor changes,” adds Haltem. “When you hear stories like the ones we’re dealing with now, it’s a whole culture that’s…” Hatlem pauses, struggling to find the right word: “sick.”