Wow 24 months ago folks the Toronto
Police Service started its search for
the new police chief I threw my hat in
the ring for two reasons I really
believe and passionately want to serve
and protect the most vulnerable
victimized marginalized people in
society that’s a personal thing second
reason I thought it was a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to
take on the top cop job and provide
needed change in Canada’s largest
municipal Police Service and by doing
that influenced policing right across
this country and right around the world
now some of you may know I wasn’t
successful in that little exercise but I
wasn’t deterred because it’s not about
position or rank it’s about making a
difference in making a change so I
continue to serve my city and serve
within the Toronto Police Service and
make the best contribution I could in
the circumstances that I found myself in
but about a year later I decided that I
need a bit of her challenge I needed to
try to make a bigger change I’d spent 27
years trying to make change inside
policing and so I decided to leave go to
the private sector and become a partner
within Deloitte heading up their
national security and justice practice
so I could make needed change from the
outside of policing now I’m here today
to talk about policing I’m here to tell
you that we can make bigger change need
a change and we can do it together
policing needs to change and there are
public safety issues across this country
that need different and innovative
approaches to address them there are
police officers in rural communities and
urban communities who are increasingly
frustrated by the lack of real progress
within their profession of choice
they’re increasingly frustrated about
their inability to serve and protect the
community members in their jurisdiction
and they’re increasingly frustrated
checked themselves when they go to work
emotionally and physically and
psychologically and there are community
members from coast to coast to coast in
this country and within the audience
that’s watching us today who are
increasingly frustrated by the quality
and the cost of policing the financial
and social costs of policing and quite
frankly those people deserve to be
better served protected and yes
respected that’s why I’m here today I
want to share with you some lessons
learned some ideas in the form of
stories from four different parts of the
world stories that are gonna push you
push leaders in policing in civil
society to not accept what we’ve been
told the change can’t happen it can’t
happen soon it’s too expensive it’s too
difficult real change can happen in
policing and in public safety the first
story I want to tell you about was this
amazing lady Marcia Brown who I met in
2012 now those of you who are from the
City of Toronto will know that in 2012
we had escalating levels of gun gang and
drug-related violence across the city
two major incidents stood out in the
Eaton Centre in the busy food court two
gang members opened up on each other
with guns seven people were shot and one
young man lost his life a pregnant
mother and a child under the age of 13
were also wounded a few weeks later at a
sunny backyard barbecue in south
scarborough gang members got together
and opened up in a confined area 22
people were shot and two young people
lost their lives but there are other
tragedies spread across the city and
some of those tragedies took place in
marcia brown’s Rexdale neighborhood now
marcy is a very special person she’s
actually a special education teacher but
she decided after a weekend of
particularly bad violence that she
needed to do something more she
challenged herself to do something
different and do it with different
people to accomplish different outcomes
for the people in her neighborhood she
literally went out in the streets and
found 15 people who were
risk to be victimized and in some cases
to do victimizing themselves she brought
them into her new program called trust
15 the outcomes of the program in cruse
improve educational success and through
mentoring improve the characters of the
people in that program now Marci had an
immediate impact on the lives of the
people in her program and she started to
inspire the people in her neighborhood
but she couldn’t do it alone and she was
very much alone at that time that’s when
I got a phone call from the local police
commander now this gray haired cop had
been on the job for 50 years that’s one
year for every year that I’ve been alive
you can figure out my age I think he
called me to come and help him to help
Marcia we got together we got to know
Marcia and we started to work with her
to bring other people in the community
towards her program we gave her space in
the local police station so she could
open an office and we provided her with
administrative support we actually both
joined her new board of directors to
help her raise money to grow the program
the program three years later went from
15 to 190 young people who were off the
streets in the program and on the way to
success marcia brown is a courageous
person and the lessons i learned from
watching her working with private sector
leaders the local police and other
members of her community inspired me it
inspired me to try to do something
different from a policing standpoint I
started the first neighborhood policing
program in Toronto I recruited officers
from across the service to come together
in teams of four and I signed them into
the twenty most vulnerable victimized
and marginalized communities in the city
and I asked them to do three things I
asked them I didn’t tell them an
in-point of my shoulder in my rank and
direct them I asked them to do three
things number one when you go into those
neighborhoods I want you to go in there
and prevent crime not enforce the law
crime prevention was their primary
mandate not law enforcement but don’t
get me wrong enforcement is still an
important part of
policing there are some very bad people
who need to spend time behind bars but
enforcement overused and abused becomes
a negative impact a very costly negative
impact on the lives of human beings in
those communities and it does affect the
lives of the officers who are overusing
it as well to those officers I asked
them to do another thing when you go
into those neighborhoods find a
community lead organization who are
doing good things in those neighborhoods
and join them support them under their
leadership support what they’re doing
bring your resources and your energy to
bear on that find your own Marci Brown
and Trust 15 and the third thing I asked
him to do that’s I told him that they
would be measured on two outcomes their
ability to improve public safety in
their neighborhood and more importantly
their ability to improve public trust
with the people in those neighborhoods
a year later I visited every one of
those twenty neighborhood officer teams
and I heard the same story over and over
and over again I heard when they went
into their neighborhoods in the first
few weeks were met with distrust and
quite frankly sometimes disrespect I
heard that after a few weeks with
efforts on both sides of the equation
they started to talk to each other
listen to each other hear each other see
each other feel each other and once had
gotten to that point they found the
compassion to discover common ground and
common purpose and they necessary to
work together to share information
together to empower each other to create
new solutions to long-standing justice
and social problems and they had amazing
results let me tell you about a very
simple one the officer on the stream on
the screen there is sergeant Chris louse
he led the first neighborhood team I
found and assigned into the Dixon Road
community
sergeant allow his team took a long time
to build up trust in that community it
took effort on both halves of the
equation eventually they found a group
of Somali women who were trying to build
a library inside
the apartment complex in order to
provide after-school homework program
space and reading materials for the
young people they help to fund raise the
money they went out and got books
donated they helped to build the library
itself along with the community groups
yes they did some enforcement they had
to arrest some gang members in there but
after one year of those combined efforts
they reduced homicides from an average
of 10 homicides per year for the
previous three years ten shooting
homicides all involving young men for
the previous three years down to zero
zero and year one zero and year two and
zero in year three now every one of you
know there’s a social cost to a homicide
but I’m not sure how many of you know
that there’s a financial cost in 2014
Public Safety Canada did a study and
they determined that the average
homicide in Canada costs taxpayers you
me us five to six million dollars for
each homicide now just take the numbers
that we saw in three years in one micro
community in the middle of Toronto
average of 10 homicides for year for
three years that’s projected over the
next three years potentially 30 lives
that were saved 30 families that were
saved from burying their kids and for
taxpayers for those of you that matter
around dollars and cents somewhere in
the range of 15 to 18 million dollars
money that could be reinvested into
public health public education social
services why not just build an actual
library I’ve given you some examples
about urban policing in Canada’s biggest
city but do these examples actually
apply in rural communities across Canada
this is Dale McPhee a good friend of
mine he was a police chief in Prince
Albert L Saskatchewan a small town in
the middle of Prairieland he was a
private sector entrepreneur before he
became a cop and he brought that
entrepreneurial mindset to looking at
problem-solving he researched best
practices from around the world and he
found that hub service delivery models
in
health industry and other social sector
industries were really good at solving
complex problems so we built the first
police hub in Canada right in Prince
Albert now it’s based on a simple
premise you have a crime every crime is
underpinned by social issues poverty
health education you could enforce the
hell out of the crime and that actually
solved the problems so let’s see if we
can actually try to solve the hell out
of the problems and let the crime take
care of itself and so he brought an
unusual group of suspects around the
table to work with his cops public
health public education local
not-for-profits civic leaders from every
stripe in every background after three
years they’d reduced violent crime in
Prince Albert by 37 percent and they had
saved taxpayers over 13 million dollars
it’s a small population of less than
90,000 people that thirty thirteen
million dollars to go a long way
Dale McPhee then became the Deputy
Minister of Justice in the province of
Saskatchewan he did a seminal analysis
on the criminal justice system and he
found that 1% of the people in the
Saskatchewan criminal justice system
cost the system 60% of the funds 1% cost
60 percent those of you in public health
I think those numbers resonate with you
he did a further analysis on that 1%
against what he found 80% of the reason
why they were in jail mental health and
addictions
he went to premier Brad Wall he said
Brad you don’t have a crime problem in
Saskatchewan you don’t have a justice
problem in Saskatchewan you got a health
problem in Saskatchewan and you know
what else we could redirect potentially
hundreds of millions of dollars out of
the downstream justice system into
upstream preventive programs in public
health and public education and get a
bigger social and financial return on
the investment for our taxpayers the
last story I want to tell you about is
an international story two weeks ago I
was in Lisbon Portugal at a global
summit on say on smart cities and I was
part of a group of international thought
leaders police officials private sector
leaders and we were trying to figure out
not just how to make cities
martyr but how to make cities safer and
we started talking about a phenomenon
called the Bogota experiment Bogota
Colombia in 1995 the center of the
Colombian drug cartels one of the top
five most violent cities anywhere in the
world the heart of the international
drug trade alexa mayor mayor mochas a
former professor who had a platform
where he said we can turn ordinary
residents of the city of Bogota Colombia
into super citizens he was a bit of a
crazy character he thought that you
could bring different people from
different parts of civil society
together and with a little bit of
creativity a sprinkling of humor you
could come up with creative solutions
for very complex and vexing problems
just as problems crime problems social
problems as an example on average Bogota
experienced 1300 traffic accident deaths
per year 1,300 deaths in a city of
200,000 people that’s a large ratio you
take your life going into your hand and
take your life in your hands going on
the streets and he found that the
majority of those deaths took place
within intersections so he went to the
colleges and universities and he brought
actors out of the arts programs and
dress them up as clowns and put them at
the high accident locations to direct
traffic well I guess in 1995 in Bogota
clowns directed traffic better than the
cops did they reduced traffic accidents
by 50 percent in one year they saved 700
lives in one year they tackled firearm
homicides next they found that the
majority of homicides took place in
licensed premises bars and entertainment
districts involving too much
testosterone too much booze and access
to weapons they brought in the local
entertainment owners private sector
owners they formed 7,000 community
groups mostly led by women
they changed the operating hours of the
bars and the way they served alcohol and
they allowed the women and their teams
to go into the entertainment district to
modify the behavior that
testosterone-driven male
crowd within one year reduced the
homicide rate by 70% we’re talking about
the saving of thousands of lives now
what’s the common element in all these
stories first thing is is courage
courageous leaders from all walks of
life worked with other courageous
leaders from all walks of life and came
up with creative new solutions that were
customized to their local problems they
challenged the status quo all of these
changes had immediate positive impact
that were sustained over the course of
time that did not require the hiring of
more police officers or the increase of
government budgets none of them required
mass surveillance or mass arrests all of
them were done outside of our
irrespective of electoral cycles and
they all had a longtime impact on their
communities and the lives of the people
that live there now of all those
commonalities the most important one is
courage the courage to start with
yourself and challenge yourself the
courage does challenge the status quo
whether it be the culture of your
community or the nature of your
organization the courage to take
calculated risk because every one of
those people took a risk a personal and
professional risk to overcome resistance
to change the courage to do what’s right
they were self disciplined they made
self sacrifices and they provided
selfless service to their societies and
they United to include they didn’t
divide they came together even with
people they didn’t like and probably
didn’t trust and they did something big
they made a big difference in policing
and public safety
now before I finished my comments I want
to share a personal thing with you I
left the Toronto Police Service last
February and I joined the private sector
I stepped off the public stage the
conditions of my departure were such
that I didn’t have a chance to say a
proper thank you to the tens of
thousands of people in this city
and across this country who worked
courageously with me to make policing
and public safety better so before I
step off this stage today I want to send
a message out to anyone in the audience
here today and anyone in the audience
out there
help me I want to say thank you thank
you
policing is important critically
important in this city and in this
country and in any democratic city
anywhere in the world we know what it
takes to make good policing and good
Public Safety good cops working with
caring citizens and courageous civic
leaders coming together for customized
solutions to solve their problems we
know we have the tools for success in
that formula right here in this room and
in the audience and we know that we can
make real change now the only other
thing that we know is that there are no
more excuses thank you
[Applause]
Police Service started its search for
the new police chief I threw my hat in
the ring for two reasons I really
believe and passionately want to serve
and protect the most vulnerable
victimized marginalized people in
society that’s a personal thing second
reason I thought it was a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to
take on the top cop job and provide
needed change in Canada’s largest
municipal Police Service and by doing
that influenced policing right across
this country and right around the world
now some of you may know I wasn’t
successful in that little exercise but I
wasn’t deterred because it’s not about
position or rank it’s about making a
difference in making a change so I
continue to serve my city and serve
within the Toronto Police Service and
make the best contribution I could in
the circumstances that I found myself in
but about a year later I decided that I
need a bit of her challenge I needed to
try to make a bigger change I’d spent 27
years trying to make change inside
policing and so I decided to leave go to
the private sector and become a partner
within Deloitte heading up their
national security and justice practice
so I could make needed change from the
outside of policing now I’m here today
to talk about policing I’m here to tell
you that we can make bigger change need
a change and we can do it together
policing needs to change and there are
public safety issues across this country
that need different and innovative
approaches to address them there are
police officers in rural communities and
urban communities who are increasingly
frustrated by the lack of real progress
within their profession of choice
they’re increasingly frustrated about
their inability to serve and protect the
community members in their jurisdiction
and they’re increasingly frustrated
checked themselves when they go to work
emotionally and physically and
psychologically and there are community
members from coast to coast to coast in
this country and within the audience
that’s watching us today who are
increasingly frustrated by the quality
and the cost of policing the financial
and social costs of policing and quite
frankly those people deserve to be
better served protected and yes
respected that’s why I’m here today I
want to share with you some lessons
learned some ideas in the form of
stories from four different parts of the
world stories that are gonna push you
push leaders in policing in civil
society to not accept what we’ve been
told the change can’t happen it can’t
happen soon it’s too expensive it’s too
difficult real change can happen in
policing and in public safety the first
story I want to tell you about was this
amazing lady Marcia Brown who I met in
2012 now those of you who are from the
City of Toronto will know that in 2012
we had escalating levels of gun gang and
drug-related violence across the city
two major incidents stood out in the
Eaton Centre in the busy food court two
gang members opened up on each other
with guns seven people were shot and one
young man lost his life a pregnant
mother and a child under the age of 13
were also wounded a few weeks later at a
sunny backyard barbecue in south
scarborough gang members got together
and opened up in a confined area 22
people were shot and two young people
lost their lives but there are other
tragedies spread across the city and
some of those tragedies took place in
marcia brown’s Rexdale neighborhood now
marcy is a very special person she’s
actually a special education teacher but
she decided after a weekend of
particularly bad violence that she
needed to do something more she
challenged herself to do something
different and do it with different
people to accomplish different outcomes
for the people in her neighborhood she
literally went out in the streets and
found 15 people who were
risk to be victimized and in some cases
to do victimizing themselves she brought
them into her new program called trust
15 the outcomes of the program in cruse
improve educational success and through
mentoring improve the characters of the
people in that program now Marci had an
immediate impact on the lives of the
people in her program and she started to
inspire the people in her neighborhood
but she couldn’t do it alone and she was
very much alone at that time that’s when
I got a phone call from the local police
commander now this gray haired cop had
been on the job for 50 years that’s one
year for every year that I’ve been alive
you can figure out my age I think he
called me to come and help him to help
Marcia we got together we got to know
Marcia and we started to work with her
to bring other people in the community
towards her program we gave her space in
the local police station so she could
open an office and we provided her with
administrative support we actually both
joined her new board of directors to
help her raise money to grow the program
the program three years later went from
15 to 190 young people who were off the
streets in the program and on the way to
success marcia brown is a courageous
person and the lessons i learned from
watching her working with private sector
leaders the local police and other
members of her community inspired me it
inspired me to try to do something
different from a policing standpoint I
started the first neighborhood policing
program in Toronto I recruited officers
from across the service to come together
in teams of four and I signed them into
the twenty most vulnerable victimized
and marginalized communities in the city
and I asked them to do three things I
asked them I didn’t tell them an
in-point of my shoulder in my rank and
direct them I asked them to do three
things number one when you go into those
neighborhoods I want you to go in there
and prevent crime not enforce the law
crime prevention was their primary
mandate not law enforcement but don’t
get me wrong enforcement is still an
important part of
policing there are some very bad people
who need to spend time behind bars but
enforcement overused and abused becomes
a negative impact a very costly negative
impact on the lives of human beings in
those communities and it does affect the
lives of the officers who are overusing
it as well to those officers I asked
them to do another thing when you go
into those neighborhoods find a
community lead organization who are
doing good things in those neighborhoods
and join them support them under their
leadership support what they’re doing
bring your resources and your energy to
bear on that find your own Marci Brown
and Trust 15 and the third thing I asked
him to do that’s I told him that they
would be measured on two outcomes their
ability to improve public safety in
their neighborhood and more importantly
their ability to improve public trust
with the people in those neighborhoods
a year later I visited every one of
those twenty neighborhood officer teams
and I heard the same story over and over
and over again I heard when they went
into their neighborhoods in the first
few weeks were met with distrust and
quite frankly sometimes disrespect I
heard that after a few weeks with
efforts on both sides of the equation
they started to talk to each other
listen to each other hear each other see
each other feel each other and once had
gotten to that point they found the
compassion to discover common ground and
common purpose and they necessary to
work together to share information
together to empower each other to create
new solutions to long-standing justice
and social problems and they had amazing
results let me tell you about a very
simple one the officer on the stream on
the screen there is sergeant Chris louse
he led the first neighborhood team I
found and assigned into the Dixon Road
community
sergeant allow his team took a long time
to build up trust in that community it
took effort on both halves of the
equation eventually they found a group
of Somali women who were trying to build
a library inside
the apartment complex in order to
provide after-school homework program
space and reading materials for the
young people they help to fund raise the
money they went out and got books
donated they helped to build the library
itself along with the community groups
yes they did some enforcement they had
to arrest some gang members in there but
after one year of those combined efforts
they reduced homicides from an average
of 10 homicides per year for the
previous three years ten shooting
homicides all involving young men for
the previous three years down to zero
zero and year one zero and year two and
zero in year three now every one of you
know there’s a social cost to a homicide
but I’m not sure how many of you know
that there’s a financial cost in 2014
Public Safety Canada did a study and
they determined that the average
homicide in Canada costs taxpayers you
me us five to six million dollars for
each homicide now just take the numbers
that we saw in three years in one micro
community in the middle of Toronto
average of 10 homicides for year for
three years that’s projected over the
next three years potentially 30 lives
that were saved 30 families that were
saved from burying their kids and for
taxpayers for those of you that matter
around dollars and cents somewhere in
the range of 15 to 18 million dollars
money that could be reinvested into
public health public education social
services why not just build an actual
library I’ve given you some examples
about urban policing in Canada’s biggest
city but do these examples actually
apply in rural communities across Canada
this is Dale McPhee a good friend of
mine he was a police chief in Prince
Albert L Saskatchewan a small town in
the middle of Prairieland he was a
private sector entrepreneur before he
became a cop and he brought that
entrepreneurial mindset to looking at
problem-solving he researched best
practices from around the world and he
found that hub service delivery models
in
health industry and other social sector
industries were really good at solving
complex problems so we built the first
police hub in Canada right in Prince
Albert now it’s based on a simple
premise you have a crime every crime is
underpinned by social issues poverty
health education you could enforce the
hell out of the crime and that actually
solved the problems so let’s see if we
can actually try to solve the hell out
of the problems and let the crime take
care of itself and so he brought an
unusual group of suspects around the
table to work with his cops public
health public education local
not-for-profits civic leaders from every
stripe in every background after three
years they’d reduced violent crime in
Prince Albert by 37 percent and they had
saved taxpayers over 13 million dollars
it’s a small population of less than
90,000 people that thirty thirteen
million dollars to go a long way
Dale McPhee then became the Deputy
Minister of Justice in the province of
Saskatchewan he did a seminal analysis
on the criminal justice system and he
found that 1% of the people in the
Saskatchewan criminal justice system
cost the system 60% of the funds 1% cost
60 percent those of you in public health
I think those numbers resonate with you
he did a further analysis on that 1%
against what he found 80% of the reason
why they were in jail mental health and
addictions
he went to premier Brad Wall he said
Brad you don’t have a crime problem in
Saskatchewan you don’t have a justice
problem in Saskatchewan you got a health
problem in Saskatchewan and you know
what else we could redirect potentially
hundreds of millions of dollars out of
the downstream justice system into
upstream preventive programs in public
health and public education and get a
bigger social and financial return on
the investment for our taxpayers the
last story I want to tell you about is
an international story two weeks ago I
was in Lisbon Portugal at a global
summit on say on smart cities and I was
part of a group of international thought
leaders police officials private sector
leaders and we were trying to figure out
not just how to make cities
martyr but how to make cities safer and
we started talking about a phenomenon
called the Bogota experiment Bogota
Colombia in 1995 the center of the
Colombian drug cartels one of the top
five most violent cities anywhere in the
world the heart of the international
drug trade alexa mayor mayor mochas a
former professor who had a platform
where he said we can turn ordinary
residents of the city of Bogota Colombia
into super citizens he was a bit of a
crazy character he thought that you
could bring different people from
different parts of civil society
together and with a little bit of
creativity a sprinkling of humor you
could come up with creative solutions
for very complex and vexing problems
just as problems crime problems social
problems as an example on average Bogota
experienced 1300 traffic accident deaths
per year 1,300 deaths in a city of
200,000 people that’s a large ratio you
take your life going into your hand and
take your life in your hands going on
the streets and he found that the
majority of those deaths took place
within intersections so he went to the
colleges and universities and he brought
actors out of the arts programs and
dress them up as clowns and put them at
the high accident locations to direct
traffic well I guess in 1995 in Bogota
clowns directed traffic better than the
cops did they reduced traffic accidents
by 50 percent in one year they saved 700
lives in one year they tackled firearm
homicides next they found that the
majority of homicides took place in
licensed premises bars and entertainment
districts involving too much
testosterone too much booze and access
to weapons they brought in the local
entertainment owners private sector
owners they formed 7,000 community
groups mostly led by women
they changed the operating hours of the
bars and the way they served alcohol and
they allowed the women and their teams
to go into the entertainment district to
modify the behavior that
testosterone-driven male
crowd within one year reduced the
homicide rate by 70% we’re talking about
the saving of thousands of lives now
what’s the common element in all these
stories first thing is is courage
courageous leaders from all walks of
life worked with other courageous
leaders from all walks of life and came
up with creative new solutions that were
customized to their local problems they
challenged the status quo all of these
changes had immediate positive impact
that were sustained over the course of
time that did not require the hiring of
more police officers or the increase of
government budgets none of them required
mass surveillance or mass arrests all of
them were done outside of our
irrespective of electoral cycles and
they all had a longtime impact on their
communities and the lives of the people
that live there now of all those
commonalities the most important one is
courage the courage to start with
yourself and challenge yourself the
courage does challenge the status quo
whether it be the culture of your
community or the nature of your
organization the courage to take
calculated risk because every one of
those people took a risk a personal and
professional risk to overcome resistance
to change the courage to do what’s right
they were self disciplined they made
self sacrifices and they provided
selfless service to their societies and
they United to include they didn’t
divide they came together even with
people they didn’t like and probably
didn’t trust and they did something big
they made a big difference in policing
and public safety
now before I finished my comments I want
to share a personal thing with you I
left the Toronto Police Service last
February and I joined the private sector
I stepped off the public stage the
conditions of my departure were such
that I didn’t have a chance to say a
proper thank you to the tens of
thousands of people in this city
and across this country who worked
courageously with me to make policing
and public safety better so before I
step off this stage today I want to send
a message out to anyone in the audience
here today and anyone in the audience
out there
help me I want to say thank you thank
you
policing is important critically
important in this city and in this
country and in any democratic city
anywhere in the world we know what it
takes to make good policing and good
Public Safety good cops working with
caring citizens and courageous civic
leaders coming together for customized
solutions to solve their problems we
know we have the tools for success in
that formula right here in this room and
in the audience and we know that we can
make real change now the only other
thing that we know is that there are no
more excuses thank you
[Applause]
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