USE OF FORCE DATA IN ONTARIO
Abolition scholar Robin Maynard maintains that Black communities are associated with criminality in public spaces and interactions with police officers (Maynard, 2017). These interactions are characterized by violence and sometimes death. Maynard traces this outcome historically to slave patrols, leading to the current deaths of Black men, women, and Indigenous people when interacting with police officers. In 2020, after George Floyd’s murder by a police officer, the overwhelming rallies across Canada pushed the Ontario government to mandate police services to collect race-based data in use-of-force interactions with members of the public. At the time, numerous scholars, legal experts, and community leaders, including myself, were concerned about how this data would be collected and analyzed and, most importantly, if it would change police behavior and policy. Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard opined, “Who owns the data? How is the community informed about this information? How is the information used to inform policies, but also to inform practices?”
I received a grant in 2025 from the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto to analyze use-of-force data from the Solicitor General’s Office. I categorized this data by each city in the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area and shared analysis with community members, Black and Indigenous organizations across the province, and media outlets. By employing this knowledge mobilization project, I hoped to provide Black and Indigenous communities with relevant data to support their advocacy efforts in addressing systemic racism in policing and educating the public on the adverse effects of police brutality as it pertains to use-of-force interactions.
In 2020, the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre, and Dr. Ameil Joseph analyzed use-of-force data released by Hamilton Police Services. Their analysis concluded the following: despite making up about 19% of Hamilton’s population, roughly 38% of use-of-force incidents involved at least one racialized person. Black and Indigenous individuals were over-represented in use-of-force incidents; approximately 39% of all occurrences categorized as “weapon calls” involved at least one racialized person. 3 The over-representation of Black and other racialized communities continues to persist; in 2024, Dr. Ameil Joseph and anti-racism community organizations consistently asked Hamilton Police Services how this information of disproportionality is informing or changing policies and practices of police officers and services. To date, no concrete answers have been provided despite Police reports concluding the overrepresentation of Black and Racialized individuals in use-of-force interactions.
2023 Use of Force Data - Infographics by Cassandra Garcia & Kojo Damptey
Snapshot of Ontario Provincial Police
13% of all individuals who had force used against them were Indigenous males
26.7% of women and girls who had force used against them were Indigenous.
28.9% of all individuals who had force used against them were Indigenous or Black.
Snapshot of Peel Region
27.5% of all individuals who had force used against them were Black males.
20.3% of women and girls who had force used against them were East/Southeast Asian.
16.6% of all individuals who had force used against them were East/Southeast Asian males.
Snapshot of Toronto
33.3% of all individuals who had force used against them were Black males.
Black women had an equal number of cases to White women overall (n=186).
83.3% of all boys 17 and younger who had force used against them were Black or Middle Eastern.
