It has been a time of change for Peel Police. In the past year, the service has laid the groundwork for a landmark agreement aimed at restoring trust with Black, Native American and racialized communities, launched initiatives to reduce the use of force by police on people in crisis, and took the long requested. step of collecting race-based data on traffic stops, all while dealing with the fallout from several high-profile cases of police violence, not to mention the global pandemic.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Star earlier this month, Peel Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah said his goal is for the service to continue to enter “spaces that are uncomfortable for policing.”
He added: “The vision is to be the most progressive and inclusive police service serving a community.”
Here are seven key takeaways from the Star interview.
How to respond to people in crisis
In the past 15 months, the Ontario police watchdog has cleared Peel police officers of criminal wrongdoing in several high-profile deaths, including at least three involving people in mental health crises.
In the example of D’Andre Campbell, 26, a Brampton man who was shot to death inside his own home, the Special Investigations Unit ruled that a Peel officer acted in self-defense but still highlighted problems with how the service treated a person they knew had a history of mental illness.
Speaking to the Star, Duraiappah said his agenda for 2022 includes regaining the public’s trust following Campbell’s death, and the like. The incidents have prompted him to reconsider officer training and whether police are “the appropriate resource” for responding to mental health crises, he said.
Duraiappah emphasized that police are being asked to be a panacea for problems they are not better equipped to deal with, such as problems related to poor housing, mental health and addiction.
“We hope to have an alternative response model that is not uniform,” he said, whose beginnings are already happening in a partnership with crisis workers from the Canadian Peel-Dufferin Mental Health Association, and a plan to add a crisis worker to Dispatch. 911 for triage calls that may not require a uniformed officer.
When should the police resort to outside help?
Duraiappah said the legislated internal investigations into the SIU cases “find no deviations from policy” but did highlight a key trend: “We know that some of these people had multiple contacts with the police in the previous months,” he said.
In two years, around 100 people have been responsible for more than 2,200 service calls in the Peel region, he said.
That finding prompted the service to set up a team of 53 officers to triage non-criminal calls and “find those who have very high risks and needs and, in non-emergency situations, see if they can connect them to services,” he said. Duraiappah. Last year, those officers connected about 1,600 people with other agencies.
The chief specifically spoke of a person who had made 163 calls to the police over four years.
“In the time that these officers were able to connect with that person and connect them to a service, in the entire past year, we only had one contact with them.”
Advances in race and human rights
Peel Police have been working with the Ontario Human Rights Commission on the terms of a legally binding plan to address systemic racism and discrimination since the fall of 2020, with a final agreement expected this year.
On human rights, Duraiappah said the service is gradually changing the way it engages with communities of color, with initiatives including ending police presence in schools, collecting data based on race and introducing body cameras for officers.
“There needs to be a change in the way we treat young people and the demand from our racialized population for more responsibility and trust,” Duraiappah said.
“We have changed some of our officers’ behavior from a training standpoint,” he added, noting especially his confidence that the introduction of body cameras will change officer behavior.
The service has also collaborated with academics to develop a training program for officers who respond to young people of color in crisis.
“We hope that little by little it will reduce some of these interactions,” Duraiappah said.
The value of race-based data
A key part of the human rights commission’s guidance was a call to begin collecting race-based data on officers’ interactions with people of color.
The service’s first step toward that is a pilot project that collects data on police traffic stops.
“Because we’ll have that kind of robust data, we can really see disproportionality and patterns,” said Lorne Foster, a University of York researcher called in to help collect and analyze the data.
“If we can detect a pattern, then we can build training mechanisms and policies to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
Duraiappah noted that 2022 will produce 12 months of data that can give the public an idea of the problems and what is being done to address them.
“We are not afraid of what we see or hear,” he said.
About road safety
After a record year for road deaths in 2020 (Peel’s 43 road deaths were double the year before and more than even Toronto), Duraiappah said he had to rethink how his officers deal with a “loss of life.” atrocious”.
The change included directing officers to help motorists address drinking and other addiction problems by referring them to Peel’s various addiction services. “We’re trying to see if we can get people off track,” Duraiappah said.
The service also added 16 officers to a road safety team “their only job is to focus on high-risk offenders,” it said.
Peel saw a roughly 25 percent reduction in road-related fatalities in 2021, he added.
The impact of COVID-19
With a 90% service-wide vaccination rate, Peel Police have managed to deal with COVID-19 without a major impact on police operations, despite officers without an approved exception being licensed without salary.
Still, Duraiappah said the service has taken a beating as staff work through record levels of stress and anxiety. “We have seen an increase in the number of officers requiring support, such as psychological help and welfare,” he said.
Your priorities for 2022
Looking ahead, Duraiappah said he’s especially focused on road deaths, mental health and addictions, violent crime and priority populations.
He said Peel was lucky to see a drop in shootings and homicides in the past two years, but warned there has been an increase in roadside gun seizures.
“We see that 80 percent of the traceable handguns that we seize are from the United States,” he said.
He emphasized that in cases involving young men, the service is now bringing in other agencies to support parents and carers to engage them constructively, such as at-risk career guidance and young men’s empowerment programmes.
“It’s not a soft approach to crime,” he said. “It’s a more comprehensive approach.”
Reference-www.thestar.com