When it comes to rank-and-file Toronto cops, there will soon be a new sheriff in town.
Voting for the new president of the Toronto Police Association starts Monday.
With current President Jon Reid announcing his retirement after 36 years of being a cop and director and president, it has opened things up for a new voice to lead the 7,000-member union at a difficult time when crime is up and so is the cost of living.
It’s a three-horse race to fill that role.
Three good police officers who bring different perspectives and have forced conversations among the members in just which way they want the association to go.
This in and among the fourth most important and powerful job in policing in Toronto. Sometimes it’s the most important. You have the chief of police, the mayor, the head of the police services board and the association president.
No one is closer to those who serve in uniform than the person who is elected to this role.
The three candidates vying to lead their members this time, in alphabetical order, are Clayton Campbell, Ennis Spencer and Jason Tomlinson.
All three are good cops and offer different perspectives.
Campbell and Tomlinson are current TPA directors (positions they give up to run for president) and both are respected and well known.
Spencer is an officer in 33 Division who considers himself the “outsider candidate” but says he’s been hearing a lot of “positive” feedback in his campaigning.
All three are quality people and police officers and the TPA can’t go wrong with whatever the members decide.
It is their decision to make.
“I feel we are all stronger standing together as TPA members and better people when we have each other’s backs … I was the platoon staff sergeant who stood up to the chief about staffing,” Clayton Campbell said. “My family was at the protest and helped make it happen, along with the wife of one of our platoon-mates. I was proud, and continue to be proud, of what our platoon and our families accomplished.”
“Let’s campaign on the issues and ideas, rather than attacking one another,” he said. “In the end, we’re all on the same team!”
Ennis Spencer said his “main focus is respect and fairness.
He maintains TPA members receive neither as the 50th highest paid officers in Canada, which he said is not appropriate with people “spitting on us and killing us.”
Spencer called the situation “pathetic” and he would like to make it clear while “special interests” sometimes run the service, he will always “stick up for the members” while bringing in “new ideas.”
On the issue of bail, Spencer said “how dare they” let people out on bail who have run people over or used a gun, and he will also push to have people charged who “lie” and “drag officers through the mud” with false allegations of misconduct.
Jason Tomlinson believes, “Now is the time to bring our members together so that we present as a strong, unified front.”
“We continue to be in the line of fire … This is not the time for willful blindness,” he said. “We do not have a contract, and our voice needs to be strongly heard by those whose decisions affect our lives and livelihood. We have powerful opponents, and we need a leader who is fearless enough to face our adversaries, even if that means going through the difficult and messy process of tearing apart old ways of doing things, to make new and better ones …”
Tomlinson maintains TPS members “deserve a president who challenges the chief and himself.”
“You deserve a leader who combines professionalism with grit, and you deserve a president who is a leader, not a follower,” he added.
TPA members will begin casting their ballots Monday, and this will go on for a week before the final tally will be decided and a new president is sworn in.
There are common themes coming from all three – the police not having a proper contract is one, their safety is another, as is concern over the lack of respect they deal with from the street and the political level.
The job police officers do, especially in this last year of endless shootings and dealing with political protests almost every day, adds a wear and tear to their lives that can’t be discounted. Every move they make – arrest, comment or action – is scrutinized thanks to everybody having a video camera on their phone and access to social media.
And the courts routinely grant bail within a day or so to just about everybody they work so hard and risk their lives to arrest.
It can be a demoralizing job. And many officers are getting hurt or sometimes killed.
It’s also not easy to be TPA president because you are dealing with human beings who are on the job, those who oversee or scrutinize those who do it, and a complicated public and their perspectives. In addition, just about every police officer, and the civilians the TPA also serves, are strong-minded souls who have opinions on how things are done and how they should be done.
It’s not always fun. But these three have stepped forward and said they want to serve their members.
Only one will emerge as the next TPA president.