Toronto police “substantially” overestimate how competent they are at dealing with intercultural issues, which can result in members believing they “get it” and misread conflicts between police and Toronto’s diverse population, reveals a report based on a voluntary survey of more than 800 staff.The report, commissioned by the Toronto Police Service, paints a service-wide profile of an organization that has a “fuzzy sense of what intercultural competence looks like and what culturally responsive policing involves.”Outside consultants, including a former Toronto police board member, completed their report in March 2015 — amid intense controversy over racially skewed carding and an aggressive anti-violence unit that is now disbanded — but the report was never made public.The Star obtained the 135-page report and 270 pages of appendices in a freedom-of-information request. The report, which included interviews with 15 senior commanders and comments from focus group sessions, provides an inside look into Toronto police culture and highlights areas for service-wide and individual improvement, based on an assessment tool no other Canadian police service had comprehensively used before.Read the executive description Read the full report As part of the Toronto police PACER review, a group of 809 officers, senior commanders and civilian employees volunteered to take an “Intercultural Development Inventory” test. It’s a questionnaire-based tool developed by Mitchell Hammer, a U.S.-based academic and consultant. Toronto-based diversity consultant Hamlin Grange, a former Toronto police board member and former journalist, was also brought on board, in April 2014, through his company DiversiPro, to do the service-wide study.The IDI test has been used mainly in the U.S. by large corporations, schools and government to gauge intercultural competence. Grange said he could not comment on the findings due to a ...
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