Episode Details

The Toronto Police Service is one of the oldest institutions in this country. In fact it’s 33 years older than the country itself.

And in all of those nearly two hundred years of history, you’d be hard-pressed to find a darker time for the force than right now.

That’s because last week, seven current and one former Toronto Police officers were arrested and charged with an absolute litany of offences — drug trafficking, theft, accepting bribes, illegal weapons possession, conspiracy to obstruct justice, fraud, breach of trust, harassment and, worst of all, conspiracy to commit murder.

And while we don’t have many details yet, the little we do know is certainly breathtaking. The investigation began after hitmen attempted to assassinate a corrections officer at his home last year. And many of these officers are alleged to have used the police database to facilitate shootings across the region, seemingly at the behest of an alleged drug trafficker Brian Da Costa.

During the press conference announcing the charges, the media were shown video after video of gunmen firing shots into cars and homes in suburban neighbourhoods.

In addition to murder and intimidation on behalf of a drug trafficker, many of these officers were allegedly dealing themselves, everything from cocaine to adderall to fentanyl, while also working with illegal cannabis stores dotted throughout the city.

And there already appears to be connections to the city’s infamous tow-truck industry, which has itself been responsible for an absurd number of shootings and murders over the last few years.

This is far from the first scandal of a similar variety that has plagued police forces in Ontario. The most obvious parallel is the so-called “Scherzer crew,” a rogue TPS drug squad that was alleged to have embarked on a four-year-long crime spree, robbing drug dealers throughout the city. More recently, cops from a variety of agencies have been charged with corruption in connection with all of that tow-truck crime.

But this latest set of allegation is at a level above anything else this city has ever seen. Conspiracy to commit murder? Of a corrections officer? That speaks to a level of brazenness that’s hard to comprehend.

But here’s the truth of the matter — none of this should be a surprise. This deep-rooted corruption is an inevitable consequence of how the TPS operates. For at least half-a-century, the Toronto Police have been masters of this city, subject to no authority other than their own.

We have allowed this police force to morph into a violent gang. It’s time they were finally brought to heel.

This case of corruption is only the latest symptom of an obviously sick institution. On the Toronto subreddit, one user named u/whatistheQuestion, compiles a rolling list of news stories about local police misconduct every year. It makes for desultory reading — police shootings, excessive force, robbing civilians, lying on the stand, professional incompetence, sexual assault, drunk driving and every other kind of bad behaviour under the sun.

There are around five thousand sworn officers in the service. And it’s truly hard to imagine a random sampling of five thousand city residents committing as many unethical and illegal actions on a regular basis.

And the irony is that most of those stories recount the kinds of incidents that are in the news one day and gone the next. Ask your average Torontonian, and