BY: Saada Branker

In the Toronto Police Service (TPS), it’s not every day that a champion for change rises to a coveted position within the organization’s senior ranks. But lately those days are happening more frequently. It happened in September 2009 to Peter Sloly. This new deputy chief is now overseeing one of five executive commands that report directly to the Chief of Police, Bill Blair.

On so many levels, diversity runs deep for Sloly, a 21-year veteran within the TPS, which employs about 5,500 officers and 2,200 civilians. Never mind Sloly’s boyish good looks. At age 43, his knowledge and experience comes from a variety of sources: his MBA and sociology degrees, his much-appreciated community involvement, his training in professional soccer, his brown skin and even his Jamaican heritage. Every one of these assets has enriched his already exceptional abilities on the job.

Sitting in his office at the TPS downtown headquarters, Sloly talks about his career. He went from street cop to unit commander to staff superintendent before landing the deputy chief position. He says that there are fellow officers who are open to being persuaded of what he could bring to policing. It probably helps that his enthusiasm is disarming — yet he remains serious and forthright about his organization’s mission to serve and protect Toronto’s 2.6 million residents.

Challenging times
When Sloly decided to join the police service in 1988, recruitment in the organization was a different thing from what exists today. Despite making it in, the implications of his achievement were overshadowed by the reality of the times.

Toronto in the late ’80s was marked by volatile race relations, so they made international headlines. “There were high-profile shootings involving the black community and the police. All the angst in that,” says Sloly. “And then the issues of all the isms…. You’re inside the organization, but you’re also from the community.

The inside environment was not as welcoming to women or visible minorities; not as accommodating to people with disabilities; not as understanding around issues of gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered persons.” It was, says Sloly, a challenging environment at work; and outside, he also faced a challenging community.

“It was very difficult to put on your uniform and go to work and then take it off and come back to your community and be peppered with questions: ‘How can you do this?’ Quite frankly I took some pretty bad abuse from my fellow officers and I took worse abuse from my fellow community members.”

Sloly says he responded the only way he knew how. “I could have said, ‘Yeah, all those cops are terrible; I’m only doing it to work.’ Or I could be honest and say, ‘Not all cops are terrible’ and ‘we do good things.’ I figured I could change the police more being on the inside than I could do being on the outside.”

An overhaul
About five years ago, Sloly was placed to work with the Deputy Chief Keith Forde, a respected leader in charge of the human resources command at the TPS.

“Keith and I were given the job of hiring 600 people with a system that wasn’t producing that much quantity, not enough diversity and not the type of skills that we wanted to see in police officers on the frontline.”

Focusing on employment, Sloly did a complete review. “I actually went through every part of the hiring system myself to see what it felt like to be on the other side. I did the fitness test, the psychological test, the interviews.” What they found were areas in the hiring system that created unintentional barriers and unintentional bottlenecks for applicants whose skills and knowledge were needed in the organization but who faltered in the testing phase. “And it affected not just women and minorities but all applicants,” Sloly says. So they went about implementing changes. Today between 40 and 60 per cent of new recruits are women and visible minorities.

Sloly admits that the organization’s greatest challenge remains the resistance to change from some fellow officers and members of communities who prefer things the way they were. But as deputy chief, Sloly says he’s now hoping to help design better procedures that can transform the shape, the culture and the face of policing. “And to provide police services in a way that I, as a citizen who lives in this city, would know that my wife or my daughter or my brother is treated properly. And so here I am.”

Police PROFILES:
Canada’s other Extraordinary Officers

Rose Fortune
Rose Fortune was born a slave in Virginia, US before moving with her family to Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia where they gained their freedom.

Growing up on the North Shore, Fortune eventually became an independent businesswoman and unofficial, yet widely respected, policewoman in the late 1700s.

She was self-appointed to enforce curfews and keep the peace.

Keith Forde
In 2005 Keith Forde became the first visible minority deputy chief at the Toronto Police Service. A tireless community worker, he sits on the board of directors for Scarborough Hospital, United Way Youth Challenge Fund and Camp Jumoke. He has received numerous awards from community and faith groups, and government agencies, including the Harry Jerome Trailblazer Award, African Canadian Achievement Award, Jamaica Community Award and the Chief of Police Excellence Award.

Jean-Ernest Célestin
Commander Jean-Ernest Célestin has been with the City of Montreal’s Police Service since 1991. He worked as an undercover agent in the narcotics division, then as a senior agent before moving on to the service’s tactical squad. Celestin took on the leadership of the Poste de Quartier or Neighbourhood Station 15 in January 2008.

Originally published in Sway Magazine, Winter 2010

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