Toronto Police Service

The Toronto Police Service is a municipal police force in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the primary agency responsible for providing law enforcement and policing services in Toronto. Established in 1834, it was the first local police service created in North America and is one of the oldest police services in the English-speaking world.
It is the largest municipal police service in Canada, and the fourth largest police force in Canada after Ontario Provincial Police, Sûreté du Québec, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. With a 2023 budget of $1.16 billion, the Toronto Police Service ranks as the second largest expense of the City of Toronto's annual operating budget, after the Toronto Transit Commission.

History

19th century

The City of Glasgow Police and London Metropolitan Police were the first modern municipal police departments, but the Toronto Police is older than the New York City Police Department, and Boston Police Department. It is the second-oldest continuously operating municipal police force in the world.
The Toronto Police Service was founded in 1834 as Toronto Police Force or sometimes as Toronto Police Department, when the city of Toronto was first created from the town of York. Before that, local able-bodied male citizens were required to report for night duty as special constables for a fixed number of nights per year on penalty of fine or imprisonment, in a system known as "watch and ward".
In 1835, Toronto retained five full-time constables—a ratio of about one officer for every 1,850 citizens. Their daily pay was set at 5 shillings for day duty and 7 shillings, 6 pence, for night duty.
In 1837, the constables’ annual pay was fixed at £75 per annum, a lucrative city position when compared to the mayor's annual pay of £250 at the time. Although constables were issued uniforms in 1837, one contemporary recalled that the Toronto Police was "without uniformity, except in one respect—they were uniformly slovenly." A provincial government report in 1841 described the Toronto Police as "formidable engines of oppression".

1845 to 1859

By 1848, the Catholic population in Toronto rose to 25 percent. Toronto constables on numerous occasions suppressed opposition candidate meetings and took sides during bitter sectarian violence between Orange Order and Irish Catholic radical factions in the city.

Toronto Circus Riot

On the night of Thursday, 12 July 1855, S. B. Howes' Star Troupe Menagerie & Circus clowns, and Hook and Ladder Firefighting Company volunteers patronized the bordello of Mary Ann Armstrong on King Street near Jarvis Street, a fight got started, with the firefighters retreating. The next day, Friday, 13 July 1855, a crowd gathered at the Fair Green, a grassy space on the waterfront where the circus had pitched their tents, threw stones and insults, and demanded that a clown named Meyers be handed over. Circus wagons were burned, the fire bell was rung, yet when Hook and Ladder Firefighting Company arrived, they joined the riot. The militia later arrived, called in by the mayor, and defused the riot.
After public outrage at the police's failure to prosecute, an inquiry and an election led to mass firings and selective rehirings in 1859.

1859 to 1900

The new force was removed from Toronto City Council jurisdiction and placed under the control of a provincially mandated board of police commissioners. Under its new chief, former infantry captain William Stratton Prince, standardized training, hiring practices, and new strict rules of discipline and professional conduct were introduced. Today's Toronto Police Service directly traces its ethos, constitutional lineage, and Police Commission regulatory structure to the 1859 reforms.
In the 19th century, the Toronto Police mostly focused on the suppression of rebellion in the city, particularly during the Fenian threats of 1860 to 1870. The Toronto Police were probably Canada's first security intelligence agency when they established a network of spies and informants throughout Canada West in 1864 to combat US Army recruiting agents attempting to induce British Army soldiers stationed in Canada for deserting to serve in the Union Army in the Civil War. The Toronto Police operatives later turned to spy on the activities of the Fenians and filed reports to the Chief Constable from as far as Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago and New York City. In December 1864, the Canada West secret frontier police was established under Stipendiary Magistrate Gilbert McMicken, and some of the Toronto Police agents were reassigned to this new agency.
In 1863, Toronto police officers were also used as "Indian fighters" during the Manitoulin Island Incident, when some fifty natives armed with knives forced the fishery inspector William Gibbard and a fishery operation to withdraw from unceded tribal lands on Lake Huron. Thirteen armed Toronto police officers, along with constables from Barrie, were dispatched to Manitoulin Island to assist the government in retaking the fishery operation, but were forced back when the natives advanced, now armed with rifles. The police withdrew but were later reinforced and eventually arrested the entire band, but not before William Gibbard was killed by unknown parties.
In the 1870s, as the Fenian threat began to gradually wane and the Victorian moral reform movement gained momentum, Toronto police primarily functioned in the role of "urban missionaries" whose function it was to regulate unruly and immoral behavior among the "lower classes". They were almost entirely focused on arresting drunks, prostitutes, disorderlies, and violators of Toronto's ultra-strict Sunday "blue law"
In the days before public social services, the force functioned as a social services mega-agency. Before the creation of the Toronto Humane Society in 1887 and the Children's Aid Society in 1891, the police oversaw animal and child welfare, including the enforcement of child support payments. They operated the city's ambulance service and acted as the board of health. Police stations at the time were designed with space for the housing of homeless, as no other public agency in Toronto dealt with this problem. Shortly before the Great Depression, in 1925, the Toronto Police housed 16,500 homeless people. The Toronto Police regulated street-level businesses: cab drivers, street vendors, corner grocers, tradesmen, rag men, junk dealers, and laundry operators. Under public order provisions, the Toronto Police were responsible for the licensing and regulation of dance halls, pool halls, theaters, and, later, movie houses. It was responsible for censoring the content of not only theatrical performances and movies but also of all literature in the city, ranging from books and magazines to posters and advertising. The Toronto Police also suppressed labor movements, which were perceived as anarchist threats. The establishment of the mounted unit is directly related to the four-month Toronto streetcar strike of 1886, when authorities called on the Governor General's Horse Guard Regiment to assist in suppressing the strike.

20th century

As for serious criminal investigations, the Toronto Police frequently contracted with private investigators from the Pinkerton's Detective Agency until the 20th century, when it developed its own internal investigation and intelligence capacity.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Toronto Police under Chief Constable Dennis "Deny" Draper, a retired brigadier general and former Conservative candidate, returned to its function as an agency to suppress political dissent. Its notorious "Red Squad" brutally dispersed demonstrations by labor unions and by unemployed and homeless people during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Suspicious of "foreigners", the police lobbied the city of Toronto to pass legislation banning public speeches in languages other than English, curtailing union organizations among Toronto's vast immigrant populations working in sweatshops.
After several scandals, including a call by Chief Draper to have reporters "shot" and his being arrested for driving drunk, the city appointed in 1948 a new police chief from its ranks for the first time in the department's history: John Chisholm, a very able senior police inspector. In 1955, the Metropolitan Toronto Board of Police Commissioners was formed in preparation for the amalgamation of the 13 police forces in the municipality, Metropolitan Toronto, into a unified police force with Chisholm as chief of the unified force. Unfortunately, Chisholm was not up to the politics of the Chief's office, especially in facing off with Fred "Big Daddy" Gardiner, who engineered almost single-handedly the formation of Metropolitan Toronto in the 1950s.
On January 1, 1957, the Toronto Police merged with the other municipal forces in the metropolitan area to form the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force:

Former police force	Current community	Field	Divisions
Scarborough Police Department	Scarborough	Area	41, 42, 43
Etobicoke Police Department	Etobicoke	Area	22, 23
North York Police Department	North York	Area; parts of Central	31, 32, 33; parts of 12, 13, 53
East York Police Department	East York	Central	54
Mimico Police Department	Etobicoke	Area	22
Weston Police Department	York	Area and Central	12, 31
Forest Hill Police Department	Toronto	Central	53
Town of Leaside Police Department	East York	Central	53, 54
York Township Police Department	York	Central	13
New Toronto Police Department	Etobicoke	Area	22
Swansea Police Department	Toronto	Central	11
Long Branch Police Department	Etobicoke	Area	22

With amalgamation, the force grew in size and complexity, and Chisholm found himself unable to manage the huge agency and its Byzantine politics. In 1958, after several conflicts with Gardiner and members of the newly expanded Metropolitan Toronto Board of Police Commissioners, Chief Chisholm drove to High Park on the city's west end, parked his car, and committed suicide with his service revolver. Former staff superintendent Jack Webster, one of the officers who arrived at the scene of the chief's death and who would, upon his retirement in the 1990s, become the force historian at the Toronto Police Museum, would later write, "Suicide is a constant partner in every police car."
In 1960, Lawrence "Larry" McLarty became the force's first black officer and paved the way for the hiring of minorities into policing.
In 1990, the Board of Police Commissioners was renamed as the "Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board", and, upon the creation of the amalgamated City of Toronto in 1998, it became the Toronto Police Services Board, administering the Toronto Police Service.