The Toronto Police Service’s first Black superintendent says rejection of her advocacy for promoting Black officers made her feel “invisible” and ultimately contributed to her decision to bend the rules in her favor.
Under cross-examination before a Toronto police disciplinary tribunal, Supt. Stacy Clarke repeated his apology for sending test questions to black officers in advance.
But in his testimony he also described an environment in which black officers were at a disadvantage and suddenly a new hiring process that could have made hiring more fair was canceled.
“I don’t know how to explain it to you because you might not understand these kinds of feelings,” he said during cross-examination by TPS attorney Scott Hutchison. “I was invisible. He wasn’t supposed to be defending. Not for black members…. “It was my turning point.”
Clarke said it was after a meeting with senior TPS staff that he decided to submit questions to help promising black agents through the promotion system, something he testified he knew was wrong but did anyway with hoping to level the playing field.
“This doesn’t seem like a level playing field for other officers who didn’t get the answers beforehand,” Hutchison said.
“I don’t know what other officers received,” Clarke responded.
“Are you suggesting that there are other officers involved in cheating, like you were?” Hutchison asked.
“I’m suggesting the process is unfair,” Clarke said.
Clarke’s attorney has suggested that some other officers did get help from mostly white senior staff, as rumors of others sharing questions were widespread.
Former Mayor John Tory also expressed concern about the low promotion rates of Black officers during a 2021 Toronto Police Service board meeting.
“There may be ways in which we have structured the testing and interview process that disadvantage some groups,” Tory said at the time.
The court heard that the TPS Board approved a new process that would provide questions to everyone, but the process was canceled by TPS. It’s not clear exactly why; TPS has said it will not answer questions about the motive until Clarke’s hearing is over.
“The situation that Stacy Clarke is accused of is an open secret in the community… The questions were shared only among the white candidates,” Kingsley Gilliam of the Black Action Defense Committee said outside the hearing. “At the end of the day, it’s the same thing. What they did was selectively implement what they want and what they don’t want, and the hiring system didn’t change it.”
The TPS has said it will not sack Clarke, but is seeking to demote both of his ranks. She would be reinstated after a year as an inspector and then she would have to work her way back to superintendent.
Meanwhile, Clarke’s attorney, Joseph Markson, accepted a demotion, but says Clarke should be reinstated as superintendent after one year.
On Thursday, Clarkson said the TPS disciplinary court had never seen a case like Clarke’s and asked it to take Clarke’s subjective experience seriously as a mitigating factor when deciding punishment.
“It is painful to realize that your defense of them is dead. Debatable. Nonexistent,” Markson said. “There is no doubt that the perception she formed was real. And it was the tip of an iceberg of pain that came crashing down on her at that moment.”