Amanda Henry was out grocery shopping when she got a message on her phone from a Toronto police officer. Her children, the officer said, were in good health, but she needed to get back to her apartment right away.In a panic and fearing that something was wrong, the single mother of five rushed home that day in October 2016 to find the police officer in her apartment with two of her daughters, then aged 11 and 9. The officer believed there was a law that children under 12 couldn’t be left alone, according to what he later told a police oversight body.What happened next at her building led to a substantiated complaint about police misconduct and a lawsuit in which Henry, a federal civil servant and daughter of a former Toronto police officer, alleges she was racially profiled, discriminated against, wrongfully detained and assaulted in what police say was a well-being check on her kids.Henry, who is Black, Muslim and wears a hijab, believes the encounter — which would involve three additional officers in her home — “was a form of Islamophobia because of how Muslims have been and continue to be portrayed in the media. This was only compounded by the fact I am a young Black woman,” she told the Star, as is similarly alleged in her lawsuit.Her suit states she was “detained and arrested because she is a young Black Muslim woman and for no other lawful reasons.” The suit names four police officers and the Toronto Police Services Board as defendants. Henry is seeking $1.1 million in damages for pain, suffering and mental distress, and for alleged human rights code and charter breaches.Toronto police and the police board would not comment for this story, citing the fact that the case is before the courts. In a statement of defence filed on behalf of the officers and the board, police deny Henry’s allegations, which have not been proven in court.While police laid out a sequence of events in their defence document that has si ...
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