'Looking for guardians not warriors:' Q&A with Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders

Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders announced his resignation in June, amid massive protests against police violence and anti-Black racism, sparked by deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and local resident Regis Korchinski-Paquet.

Saunders leaves his post on July 31, eight months before his contract was set to expire in 2021. He did not give a reason for his departure, but said there are things he wants to do for the city of Toronto "for free."

Appointed as Toronto's first Black police chief in April of 2015, Saunders has worked in policing for more than 37 years.

With one week left until he officially retires from the police service, Saunders took some time to talk to CBC Toronto's Dwight Drummond about the recent calls to defund Toronto police, changes he would like to see in the community and how the city could put an end to gun violence. 

Here is some of that conversation.

The discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: The idea of defunding the Toronto police is not new. We've been talking about this billion dollar budget the service has, the proposed reallocation of some of that money and replacing officers on mental health calls. Is there anything you see that can be defunded?

Mark Saunders: Defunding and abolish, they're sexy words right now so everyone's jumped on the bandwagon. The budget has never changed. Ninety per cent of our budget is people, so salaries and benefits. We have turned that 10 per cent inside and out, up and down, and right around the corner. There's nothing there. The well is dry. 

We're the all encompassing, we do everything and that's because the system that's been designed has put us there. So when people get upset that at 2 o'clock in the morning I've got two law enforcement officers knocking on a door because it's a person in crisis, it's because there's no one else that's there. We're it, and everybody's felt comfortable with it because they really haven't taken a serious look at it.

If we're going to talk about defunding there are a couple of things that need to move forward. Number one, you've got to change the existing system right now so that there is a proper asset that will be able to look after that situation. If that happens then we don't need to do that anymore. Someone else can do that. Then we can talk about allocating and doing whatever we need to do. 

The talk now is that there needs to be a community component and we'll help with the training to the best of our ability because we're experts at it. Once that is built, if there is a handoff where they will look after those more than 32,000 [mental health] calls a year it'll be a great day for all of us. It has to be thought out. It's not just an emotional defund. It has to be concrete, it has to be sustainable and it has to work. Once it passes all of those tests then we're all in a better way.

Q: With so many people in mental health crises across the country dying at the hands of police, can we not say as a society 'no this is not the right way to go' and that we have to, as you say, figure out a new system?

MS: Our record speaks for itself when we're doing it hundreds of thousands of times and we have loss of life at a very, very low number. I'm not going to speak to it being not successful. Those are moments that are going to happen, they're fluid, they're dynamic. We don't want any loss of life in any circumstance, number one. 

Two, were we supplied with the right tools? It took a long time for me to fight to get Tasers in the hands of the officers and now when you look at our use of force, the numbers have come down quite considerably because we've got the right tools for those moments. You can't just say boom this is bad because of this, therefore this needs to happen.

I hate the fact that there's loss of life. We all hate that there's loss of life because what happens is this person is not a criminal, they're a patient. So should law enforcement be in those encounters? Absolutely not. But where are the support mechanisms that are there to help reduce those opportunities from ever happening? They're not there. 

It has to be thought out. It's not just an emotional defund. It has to be concrete, it has to be sustainable and it has to work.- Mark Saunders, Toronto Police Chief

There's no one size fits all, these calls are dynamic. It has nothing to do with how the officer behaves; it has everything to do with the moments. When I've got a man holding his daughter over the balcony by her feet do you think that someone else other than the police would have had the ability of dealing with it successfully?

You have to understand the moment. You can't oversimplify things because it puts us in a dangerous way. This is a journey that I can't tell you about unless you're in the skin of a police officer in those moments. You can have 10 people put in the exact same scenario and you will get 10 completely different outcomes. That's the world of policing. 

You're in the underbelly of the darkest elements of society, the darkest situations that human beings should never be in and we're there. There is no magic pill for what we do. We just train to the best of our ability. 

Q: There was a record number of shootings in 2019. Many Black people were killed or injured in these situations. At your resignation press conference you said 'I see a lot of young Black boys killing young Black boys. Law enforcement deals with those symptoms and I want to help find the cure for the disease.' How do you plan on doing that?

MS: I come with a lot of knowledge. I have the ability and have had the opportunity to be in circumstances where most human beings haven't. When working on homicide the amount of young Black boys that I would step over and the investigations that I would conduct for those types of cases — when you're seeing someone that's there and that person in that moment didn't realize that this is what the outcome was going to be, it can resonate.

I joined the service to help those that needed help. When I look at that phenomenon, when we talk about street gangs, it is predominantly black. Nobody is born wanting to be a gangster. Everyone says 'you know the world is equal for everybody' well no it's not. Especially when we talk about the impoverished, housing, education where Black boys have two times the rate of not making it to high school, and we talk about jobs. 

There are a lot of factors, these microaggressions that occur that create that human being to have a gun in his hand as a decision maker. When I'd arrest somebody for a murder and there'd be a young black man I'd have conversations with them and I knew that if there was something that stopped them from taking that gun when he hit the fork in the road they would not be here. 

Once they pull that trigger there's no return. You're a big man on the block for that moment but from that point forward you're now in a game that you have no control over. You spend the rest of your life dodging bullets and you've got to protect yourself, which is why most people carry these guns. You're also a bullet magnet, so when you're in a community these guys are coming back after you and they're shooting. 

We have to break it down. It's not a matter of just presenting a bag of money, it's a matter of looking at what is a system that needs to be put in place for that particular entity of our community that exists. One day you're a victim because you got shot at and then the next day you're charged with first degree murder and it goes on and on.

The jails right now are nothing but denying access to young Black men. Ninety per cent of the people are coming back out and when you come out it doesn't change, the world is still the same. I'm hoping that I have the opportunity of using the wisdom that I have and get the right people in the room to really create the right programs that need to be put in place for that entity.

Q: Do you think you'll be able to do more working as a civilian than as police chief? 

MS: Yeah, I do think so. Right now every day I'm spinning plates. I've got 100 fires that I need to put out when I leave. I have my family first and foremost but now I can have a more concentrated effort looking at this particular issue and hopefully keeping it at the forefront when people are talking about 'gee what do we need to do to bring down gun violence.' I think I've got a method that can do that.

Q: Would you still recommend policing as a profession to young people of this city at this point of time?

MS: Go back to 1982 and I remember when I was hired. I remember listening to the officers of the day and they were angry.  'The public doesn't trust us anymore' and 'why are we working for them.' That was when the charter of rights came in, where we had to read the rights and we felt that we were being disrespected by the public because 'what you don't trust us anymore, you don't like us anymore?'

This is going to be a narrative that is going to happen forever. We're looking for the guardians not the warriors. That core of people that want to have a positive influence in the communities that they serve and we look for that in how we hire now.

It's not about how big you are and whether you can flip tractor tires. Do you have an element of humanity in you? Do you have that emotional intelligence to understand that circumstance and what it represents not just for that encounter but what it represents for when you're in the community?