Know Your Rights Campaign

The Toronto Police Service is launching a Know Your Rights campaign in partnership with the members of the Police and Community Engagement Review, known as PACER. The campaign is being kicked off with a short video, which explains a person’s rights and a police officer’s responsibilities during the various interactions that many of you deal with on a daily basis.

The Service began working with PACER in 2012 to review procedures and practices relating to interactions between police officers and members of the community and their lived experiences. As Chief, I re-established the committee in 2020 to continue to strengthen that important link between the community and our Service. The Know Your Rights video is one initiative of PACER 2.0 and represents an effort to inform our communities. Awareness of their rights and our responsibilities as police officers helps both sides.

I want to be very clear with our members that part of building trust with the community requires that we listen to our community partners and advocates, as well as our sharpest critics. Make no mistake, working with them will never come at the expense of standing up for our officers for the very difficult jobs they do in an extremely challenging environment.

The PACER 2.0 Committee, co-chaired by Superintendent Stacy Clarke and Audrey Campbell (Jamaican Canadian Association), is comprised of both officers and civilian members including Acting Deputy Chief Myron Demkiw, Superintendent Pauline Gray, Inspector Kelly Skinner, Yvette Blackburn (Global Jamaica Diaspora Council, GJDC – Canadian Representative), Jennifer Chambers (Executive Director, Empowerment Council), Dave D’Oyen, Stephen Linton, Stephen McCammon (Legal Counsel, Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario), John O’Dell and Knia Singh (Principal Lawyer, Ma’at Legal Services).