TORONTO -- Recent allegations of excessive use of force among police in Ontario have thrust officer conduct into the national spotlight, but one expert in the field offered potential solutions to the police years ago that were never implemented.
In response to an ombudsman’s report in 2016, University of Toronto Mississauga psychologist Judith Andersen and her team developed two reports – one in 2017 and one in 2018 – that included best practices for de-escalating tense situations based and a guide to training officers on de-escalation and use of force.
“When evidence-based training is instituted on a national level, you see reductions in excessive use of force and you see reductions in lethal force usage and shootings and you see an increase in positive interactions with the public,” Andersen told NewsNight by CTV News, available on the streaming app Quibi.
The first of these reports, which were made public this week, called for a review of the Ontario Police College curriculum and a 16 hours worth of use-of-force training annually and standardized testing in de-escalation for officers, among several other recommendations for police de-escalation.
The second report offered a detailed decision model for police encounters with a subject, including factors to consider such as body language, the surroundings and internal stress factors.
“I urge the public to read these reports, to look at the data and to analyze the cases that are happening according to the decision model that we've put out,” Andersen said.
While these reports were never implemented in Ontario, Andersen has been working with police forces all over the world, where she has seen a marked improvement in police use of force and de-escalation, particularly in Finland.
“Together, we have instituted evidence-based practices into their national police curriculum, they have three years of skills-based training,” she said. “The officers carry weapons. They carry guns. There is almost no… incidents of excessive use of force, and they're rated as some of the most valued public servants in population surveys.”
“We have a case example from Finland. We have their curriculum. We have the way in which they've instituted these evidence based practices and the outcomes.”
Andersen said she decided to release the reports following several high-profile incidents of alleged excessive use of force in North America, including in Ontario, where the recent deaths of Ejaz Ahmed Choudry in Mississauga and Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto have sparked outrage.
“I believe that it is urgent that the public has access to these documents and that they're able to use those as guides for what they're asking for,” she said. “Obviously, there is a lot of outcry in the public right now for solutions across North America and understanding what the research says in solutions and evidence base will provide the public with the ability to know what to ask for and how to assess what's actually been done.”
Andersen believes her reports and recommendations, if implemented in police training, can help to de-escalate some of these situations and make police better prepared to handle them without the use of lethal force.
“We've absolutely seen that it has the potential to save lives,” she said. “Evidence-based training that I've done and my colleagues have done reduces lethal-force errors. We've seen that instituted in Finland and we've seen better outcomes on the street. We know that it works.”
On Thursday, Toronto Mayor John Tory said he would support a motion in City Hall that would ultimately defund a portion of the city’s police budget and move it to “critical community and social services” and would not rely heavily on the police for calls of people in distress.
With files from CTV Toronto
