Toronto Police Service

Toronto constables on numerous occasions suppressed opposition candidate meetings and took sides during bitter sectarian violence between Orange Order and Irish Catholic radical factions in the city.The next day, Friday, 13 July 1855, a crowd gathered at the Fair Green, a grassy space on the waterfront where the circus had pitched their tents (now, south-east corner of Front & Berkeley), threw stones and insults, and demanded that a clown named Meyers be handed over.Circus wagons were burned, the fire bell was rung, yet when Hook and Ladder Firefighting Company arrived, they joined the riot.After public outrage at the police's failure to prosecute, an inquiry and an election led to mass firings and selective rehirings in 1859.[4][6][7][8][9][10] The new force was removed from Toronto City Council jurisdiction (except for the setting of the annual budget and manpower levels) and placed under the control of a provincially mandated board of police commissioners.Under its new chief, former infantry captain William Stratton Prince, standardized training, hiring practices, and new strict rules of discipline and professional conduct were introduced.[citation needed] The Toronto Police operatives later turned to spy on the activities of the Fenians and filed reports to the Chief Constable from as far as Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago and New York City.The police withdrew but were later reinforced and eventually arrested the entire band, but not before William Gibbard was killed by unknown parties.The Toronto Police regulated street-level businesses: cab drivers, street vendors, corner grocers, tradesmen, rag men, junk dealers, and laundry operators.It was responsible for censoring the content of not only theatrical performances and movies but of all literature in the city ranging from books and magazines to posters and advertising.During the 1930s and 1940s, the Toronto Police under Chief Constable Dennis "Deny" Draper, a retired brigadier general and former Conservative candidate, returned to its function as an agency to suppress political dissent.Its notorious "Red Squad" brutally dispersed demonstrations by labor unions and by unemployed and homeless people during the Great Depression of the 1930s.Unfortunately, Chisholm was not up to the politics of the Chief's office, especially in facing off with Fred "Big Daddy" Gardiner, who engineered almost single-handedly the formation of Metropolitan Toronto in the 1950s.After the fourth police killing of a young black man in as many years, a peaceful protest on Yonge Street later turned into a riot.FIFA president Sepp Blatter later apologized to the Toronto mayor for the incident, and instigated disciplinary action against the officials and players of the Chilean team.In 2008, undercover officers also must wear, carry or have access to standard police use-of-force options such as pepper spray and batons.[29][30] In 2013, 18-year-old Sammy Yatim was shot and killed by Constable James Forcillo on the 505 Dundas streetcar after threatening other passengers and the police with a knife.[31] In 2020, Constable Peter Roberts was arrested and charged with obtaining sexual services for consideration from persons under 18 years of age.The service's mounted unit respond to radio calls and proactively patrol, providing crowd control operations, and assisting with community relations programs.Patches on the jackets and shirts are similar to those of the Toronto Police Service but with a white background and the blue wording "parking enforcement".Their vehicles have the same paint scheme as the older Toronto Police Service squad cars, but they are labeled with '"parking enforcement" and fleet numbers "PKE" (east) or "PKW" (west).[47] The morality department was formed in 1886, when then Mayor William Holmes Howland appointed ex-Royal Irish Constabulary officer David Archibald to head this special unit of the Toronto Police Service to deal specifically with "vice, sin, and crimes which heavily impacted women and children".However, when examining the direct implementation/enforcement of these laws, and the effects they had on civilian life, the larger purpose of the morality department was to prevent working-class people from socializing or coming together, and thereby to keep them in a generally less powerful position.Of course, everyone would fall under these practices who was not seen to be morally, or socially, good, but women and people of color were seen by the government as inherently lesser or more susceptible to temptation or sin, and so they were policed far more heavily than their white or male counterparts.[53] The officers' methods often called for them to threaten fines or jail time rather than arrest all offenders, which made them popular among people as a social service.The legitimate forms of employment were few and far between; maid, secretary, and factory worker were the only plentiful options, and each of those put women in a position where they were constantly subordinate to another.[52] For most of their operating time, the majority of their work was finding absentee fathers from Canada, the U.S., and Great Britain, and then coercing them into paying maintenance payments.In the early 1910s, they were brought in under the idea that they would be better suited to deal with young women who had been acting immorally and that they would themselves be a moralizing influence in the police service.Winter jackets are either dark navy blue jacket design–Eisenhower style, single-breasted front closing, two patch type breast pockets, shoulder straps, gold buttons—or yellow windbreaker style with the word POLICE in reflective silver and black at the back (generally worn by the bicycle and traffic services units).The Mounted Unit wears black Canadian military fur wedge cap during the winter months and custodian helmet for ceremonial use.