January 13, 2003
On January 7, 2003, Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino held the second in a series of Town Hall meetings. This meeting, coming in the aftermath of the Toronto Star’s Race and Crime series that found that Toronto police engage in racial profiling was held in the Jane/Finch neighbourhood--a predominately black, lower income area of Toronto. During the meeting a 15-year-old girl asked the Chief, "How come you want us to respect the police when the police don’t respect us black youth?"
A visibly angry Fantino responded: " We’ve heard that rhetoric time and time again and I don’t agree with it. I think you have broad-brushed 7,000 people with that statement. It’s totally uncalled--for and undeserved and I don’t think it dignifies an answer." Following that exchange, the girl and several others stormed out of the meeting.
The Town Hall meeting received extensive media coverage including articles that appeared the next day in all four major Toronto dailies. Chief Fantino complained of the media coverage in the days following the meeting, saying that the media concentrated only on the negative aspect of the meeting--the exchange with the 15-year-old, and completely ignored any of the positive things that came out of the forum.
The National Post was the only one of the four dailies that reported on any positive aspects of the meeting. The Post article, written by James Cowan, was the only one that mentioned Fantino stating that in the last year, crime in Toronto had decreased by 7%. The Post also reported that when the Chief said that youth have to be accountable and not just make gratuitous and accusatory statements, he received loud applause from the 200-person crowd.
In a typically shorter article by Rob Granatstein that appeared in the January 8 edition of the Toronto Sun, the only statement that was somewhat positive was when he reported: "After the meeting Fantino expanded on his response." The Sun doesn’t state the reaction or mood of the crowd that stayed after the meeting, but at least acknowledges that some people were interested enough to want to stay after the meeting to hear Fantino further and discuss issues with him.
Jonathan Fowlie of the Globe and Mail went further than the Toronto Sun did and wrote: "Despite the brief uproar, many did stay to discuss the community’s problems and to respond to many of the issues raised in the chief’s address". Although not being as specific as the National Post was, the Globe at least reported that there were some positive aspects of the meeting and that some of the attendees had interests other than simply criticizing the police.
The most negative coverage of the meeting was that reported in the Toronto Star. Nowhere in the Star’s account, written by Melissa Leong, were any positive aspects of the meeting reported on, other than perhaps the quote from the Chief when he said "We must get these guns off the streets." The Star made a point of pointing out how Chief Fantino posed for pictures with some families before the meeting, but gave no indication of any discussion that took place after the meeting. The Star did not mention that many people in the crowd stayed after the exchange with the 15-year-old and applauded the Chief when he said that youth have to be accountable and not simply make gratuitous statements. Nor did the Star mention anything about any members of the audience agreeing with anything Fantino said, or giving the police praise for anything. The Star only wrote about the boos Fantino received when he answered the girl’s question.
The Star was the only paper that brought up the 1989 incident in which then Staff Inspector Julian Fantino released race and crime statistics to the North York Race Relations Committee. This was no doubt put in, not solely to dump on Fantino, but as a lead to the concluding paragraph of the piece, where the Star patted itself on the back for its Race and Crime series which found that the police treat blacks more harshly than whites.
Fantino was right--except for possibly the National Post, the print media was only interested in concentrating on the negative.