Organizational News
Remarks to the Toronto Police Service Board,
Chief Myron Demkiw, Deputy Chief Robert Johnson, Deputy Chief Lauren Pogue, and CAO Svina Dhaliwal,
January 14, 2025
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Chief Demkiw:
I would like to begin today by thanking Ann Morgan for your dedicated years of service as Chair of the Police Service Board.
I would also like to acknowledge and thank the outgoing Vice-Chair, Lisa Kostakis.
Thank you both for your leadership, your support, and your commitment to our shared goals.
I look forward to continuing to work with you both.
Chair Carroll and Vice-Chair Brillinger: I look forward to working with you in your new roles as we advance our multi-year hiring plan and look forward to the Board’s forthcoming strategic plan which will inform our operational efforts going forward.
I am committed to our shared goal of ensuring the safety of our city working together with you Chair, Vice-Chair, and all the Board members.
This past December marked the two-year anniversary of my tenure as Chief of the Toronto Police Service, and as of this month, I have been serving this city – the city I grew up in – for 35 years as a police officer.
Thank you to members of the Board for all the support I have received as Chief of Police.
And thank you to the Command, and all Toronto Police Service members for your partnership, friendship, and unwavering commitment to public service.
Leading the best police service in the world continues to be the honour of my life.
Over the past two years, our members have faced countless challenges, but no matter what they encounter, they handle it with professionalism, resilience, and exceptional dedication.
As you know, the volume of Priority One Calls attended has been going up.
We also continue to respond to the impacts of geopolitical events while ensuring the city remains safe during an increasing number of concerts, sporting events, and other major gatherings.
When I became Chief, I stated my priorities clearly:
- Improving trust in and within the Toronto Police Service;
- Accelerating police reform and professionalization; and
- Supporting safer communities
We have made progress on these fronts, and we know that there is still more work to be done.
In 2024, we have decreased our average response time for Priority One Calls by nearly 6 minutes, down to an average of 17.1 minutes.
I want these numbers to keep going down.
If you call us for an emergency, we want to be there as fast as possible.
One thing that will help is our multi-year staffing plan that will add a total of 720 recruits to the Service over the next two years.
As the city continues to grow, the safety of Torontonians remains our top priority.
Our members do an outstanding job protecting Toronto, but to be able to deliver even more results, we need resources, including more police officers.
I commend Chief Administrative Officer Svina Dhaliwal and the whole team for their dedication and hard work on the 2025 Budget request and with that, I would like to pass it over to the CAO.
CAO Dhaliwal:
Chair, we discussed our budget request at length during our last Board meeting.
The City process has kicked off and we will be presenting and answering questions at the City’s Executive Committee this Thursday.
I want to thank the Board for your support and the public for your input thus far, and we look forward to your continued support.
Our goal has always been to build a budget that balances affordability, and adequate and effective service delivery, that reflects the priorities of the public and is transparent.
One of the key priorities in our budget is to maintain a resilient workforce pipeline and focus on supervision of an increasingly younger frontline.
As part of this commitment, this past fall, we conducted a Sergeant promotional process, and 122 sergeants were promoted.
This process reflects a continued commitment to building fairness in our promotional processes and included a number of changes based on the evaluation we conducted on the 2023 process.
This focus on a well-supported workforce ensures our frontline is prepared to meet challenges, while reinforcing our commitment to transparency in leadership development.
Thank you.
I will now pass it over to Deputy Chief Pogue.
Deputy Chief Pogue:
To add to what you just shared about the Sergeant promotional process, I will say that the supervision that was added last year greatly aided in helping to bring our response times down and increase the level of traffic enforcement and arrests.
Supervisors help drive greater accountability and efficient and effective service delivery.
Chair, as you know, we are always working on multifaceted solutions to keep our city safe.
An essential part of our work is prevention and partnerships.
For example, as part of our Budget request, we plan to expand the Neighbourhood Community Officer Program into four new neighbourhoods this year.
Another example of this work is the Downtown Community Outreach Response and Engagement Team pilot project, also known as the Downtown CORE Team.
We soft-launched the project a few weeks ago, and we look forward to sharing more detailed results soon.
The Downtown CORE Team is a partnership with Toronto Public Health and the one-year pilot program will support vulnerable people and businesses in the Yonge and Dundas area.
Specially trained community-oriented police supervisors and constables have joined Public Health Nurses to proactively address the complex health needs of individuals in the area to improve access to health and social services.
The nurses are supported by a primary health care professional.
The primary role of officers is to support and enhance the safety of public health professionals when identifying and interacting with vulnerable community members as we connect them to services such as primary health care, mental health care, as well as social programs.
The officers are also leverage existing partnerships, and building an awareness and understanding of an approach that prioritizes a health-focused intervention, contributing to an overall improvement in public safety.
This is good for the safety and well-being of everyone.
As we work with our health care partners to help vulnerable people, we will continue to address violence and crime.
And to be clear: we WILL continue to enforce the law, arrest people trafficking narcotics, and deal with those causing harm in our communities.
Thank you. I will now pass it over to Deputy Chief Johnson.
Deputy Chief Johnson:
Chair, the Chief in his intro spoke about some of our priorities and one of these includes doing everything we can to stop gun violence.
The increase in gun violence in our city has been a challenge.
In 2024, we had a total of 85 homicides in the city, 44 of which were a result of gun violence.
There was a total of 461 shootings and firearm discharges.
We seized 717 crime guns and laid 4876 firearms charges.
Most of these illegal firearms come from the U.S.
We are taking a whole-of-service approach that includes our specialized units working with divisions to get the guns and the criminals who use them off our streets.
Yesterday, we launched Project Dodger, a new initiative aimed at addressing the rise in criminality and violence linked to the tow truck industry.
In 2024, 63 firearm discharge and shooting incidents were linked to tow truck-related disputes, accounting for almost 13 per cent of all shootings in Toronto.
In 2025, these incidents have escalated further, representing 70 per cent of the city's shooting incidents to date.
As part of Project Dodger, both plainclothes and uniformed officers will be deployed in critical areas across the city to deter violence and ensure compliance with industry regulations.
Another initiative to curb gun violence is the Illegal Firearm Awareness Campaign that we launched last week in partnership with Toronto Crime Stoppers.
This campaign features enhanced cash rewards of up to $300 for tips leading to the seizure of illegal firearms. Of those 717 crime guns we seized last year, 15 were the direct result of Crime Stoppers tips.
This is an important collaboration.
The Crime Stoppers team is ready to receive tips, and police are ready to respond.
The public plays a vital role in helping us keep our city safe.
Today, I also want to emphasize the importance of public collaboration in combating the spread of disinformation online.
Here, I’m not talking about opinions or points of view: people are allowed to disagree with one another and with the police – there’s no problem with that.
But sharing information that is demonstrably and objectively false not only erodes trust, it can also increase tensions.
We have seen examples in Toronto when community stress was unnecessarily elevated due to intentional disinformation.
We know that communities are experiencing significant stress resulting from demonstrations, protests, and reported incidents of hate.
However, when people online share, for example, videos of protests in another city pretending they are happening in Toronto, it increases tensions, unnecessarily.
So we’re asking people to be careful with the information they share.
Our role as police officers is to make sure everyone is, and feels safe:
Safe in their communities.
Safe in their neighbourhoods.
Safe everywhere in the city.
We will continue to provide factual information, and to do all we can to address the unnecessary stress being caused by disinformation.
The attacks of October 7, 2023, ongoing concerns about the rise in reported hate, and other factors are all something we must monitor and respond to locally, particularly in a city such as Toronto.
Since October 7, 2023, we have made 90 arrests and laid 129 charges in total related to Project Resolute demonstrations and protests.
Additionally, we have made a total of 197 arrests and laid 523 charges in relation to hate crimes.
This weekend, we announced the arrests of two individuals in a mischief to property investigation.
In the early hours after New Year’s Eve celebrations on January 1st, police attended a demonstration at Union Station. A smoke canister was discharged by two protestors which caused significant safety concerns.
Last Friday, we arrested and charged the two suspects with Mischief Interfere with the Lawful use of Property.
Thank you, I will now pass it back to the Chief.
Chief Demkiw:
Chair, in closing, I want to touch on a few things the team spoke of.
The Command team spoke about demonstrations and hate crimes.
While this has been an incredibly dynamic time and we can expect that to continue, I want Torontonians to know that we will continue in all our efforts to apprehend those who commit criminal acts of hate and to ensure criminal behaviour at protests and demonstrations is investigated and, where appropriate, people are put before the courts to answer for any criminal allegations.
On gun violence, since January 1st, we have already seized 16 crime guns.
In this work, we will continue to be relentless.
I want to kick off the new year by making it clear for everyone: if you engage in criminal activity, we will do everything we can to ensure you find the Toronto Police standing in your way.
Whether it’s criminal acts of hate, whether it’s gun violence, stealing cars, dealing drugs, or robbing jewelry stores: we will do everything we can to find you, and arrest you.
Torontonians deserve a city where everyone feels safe, and this will always be our top priority for 2025, and beyond.
Thanks everyone.
