1. Successful Police Governance
Eli El-Chantiry, Chair, Ontario Association of Police Services Boards
AMO Conference Aug 2017
Greetings fellow AMO Members.
It’s an honour to speak to you today about “Successful Police Governance”, or more specifically: “what needs to happen to ensure that police boards are effective in the future”.
Police governance is a unique undertaking. On one hand, the police work for and belong to the community. On the other hand, police need a certain degree of independence in order to carry out their responsibilities in a legal and ethical manner. Police are highly trained, and are uniquely empowered to use force against other citizens, in the lawful execution of their duties. Meanwhile police governors are not police officers or judges. These unique circumstances heavily influence what police governance is today, and what it could and should be.

2. Intro What is the current state of police governance?
What should successful police governance look like?
What do we need to do to ensure successful police governance?
I’d like to address the following questions for you:
What is the current state of police governance?
What should successful police governance look like?
What do we need to do to ensure successful police governance?
Let’s start with the current state of police governance

3. Current State The current state of police governance:
Lots of different boards, but not everywhere
Unclear roles
Barely any training
No unbiased feedback
Currently in Ontario there are:
51 municipal police service boards
9 first nations police boards
Roughly 110 OPP contract boards
There are also an additional 150 communities that receive (and pay for) OPP municipal police service, that do NOT have a police board or governing authority.
Boards range in size from 3 to 7 board members. Each board consists of an equal number municipal councillors and provincial appointees, plus one community member appointed by municipal council
Board member training provided by the province consists of ONLY the list of the board legislative responsibilities – and this training is not mandatory. There are widely-differing opinions among police stakeholders, by the way, regarding where board responsibilities for police operations start and end. To date, the government has failed to clarify them.
Furthermore, there is no evaluation system of boards. There are no standards that police boards should strive for, and there is no way for boards to receive regular feedback on how they are doing.
Instead, boards get feedback by exception.

4. Current State Feedback on the current state of police governance:
Public
Media
Community groups
Gov’t oversight agencies
And by ‘exception’, I mean criticism.
As you know, governance can be a thankless undertaking! Same for police governance. In fact, police boards across the province are coming under increasing criticism from the public, the media, community groups, and the Government’s oversight agencies. Issues include:
The practise of carding, and what boards are not doing about it
Secret in-camera meetings
Board member misconduct
Militant-looking police uniforms and cars
Police paid duty costs
Police budgets
School officers
Police handling of sexual assault cases
Police shootings, which disproportionately involve members of marginalized and vulnerable communities
Lack of understanding of the role of Boards
These issues are real, and they point to crises.

5. Successful Police Governance:
Success Looks Like…
Successful Police Governance:
Meaningful roles
Mandatory training
Better resourcing
Evaluations & feedback
But these crises do not have to occur.
Every success, and every failure, leads back to those who govern. The same is true for policing.
The key to avoiding public crises of confidence on police and police boards is to legislatively strengthen them. By strengthening them, I mean:
Enshrining board roles that are meaningful to the community
Mandating the training the boards need to navigate this complex environment
Ensuring that boards have the support they need to be effective, in terms of information, resources and advice
Establishing governance standards, regularly evaluating boards against those standards, and discussing how they can improve

6. Police Governance Model
Define Community-Owners’
Public Safety
Needs, Values & Expectations
To be meaningful to the community, there are 3 jobs the board must do:
Figure out what the community needs, expects and values from its police service, and what it doesn’t
Translate those community issues into strategic results the police service needs to achieve, and activities or consequences that are intolerable, and tell that to the police service
And finally, to ensure, by way of evaluations and audits, that the service is actually achieving its assigned goals and performing as directed
When you think about, this is what any governing body needs to do, if it is to be relevant and effective
3. Verify
Police Service
Performance
2. Assign
Public Safety
Outcomes & Limitations

7. What we need to do to ensure successful police governance:
Ensuring Success…..
What we need to do to ensure successful police governance:
In legislation: meaningful roles, mandatory training, governance standards & regular evaluations
Better municipal resourcing: independent support
What needs to happen to ensure successful police governance moving forward falls into 2 categories:
Legislative fixes: the new Police Services Act needs to clearly spell out the boards' role in directly engaging the community, in telling the police service what results it expects and what limits it demands, and ensuring that the police service conforms with this direction. Clearly this implies that training must be developed, delivered and attended – all of which will take effort and funding. We think the province should pay for this.
Municipal support: police boards need the governance budgets to be able to engage the staff, lawyers, consultants and networks they need do their job, without overly relying on the police service or municipal staff for all the answers and help.
Policing in Ontario is a 4 and ½ billion dollar industry, that affects the lives of all of our citizens. It’s time police governance got the clear authority, training, resources and feedback to perform effectively and consistently. Our rate payers deserve nothing less.

8. Thank you for your interest & support!
Thanks for your interest. We really want to work with you in the new police legislative framework.
Thank you for your interest & support!
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