The first high-ranking Black woman in the service’s history sought to ‘level the playing field’ for Black cops in the promotion process
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Toronto Police Insp. Stacy Clarke insists she regrets leaking interview questions and answers to six Black officers she’d mentored for promotion.
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But under cross-examination at the fourth day of her disciplinary hearing, the first high-ranking Black woman in Toronto Police history sounded increasingly more defiant than she did apologetic.
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“Having received the questions and answers, you come to decide you would, in breach of your oath of secrecy and that order, you would send the answers to some of your mentees, correct?” prosecutor Scott Hutchison asked Thursday.
“You’re correct about the act,” Clarke responded, “but with all due respect, Mr. Hutchison, I think it’s important you understand the moments that led up to that action – my experience with systemic racism, my experience with systemic unfairness and also my experience with the challenges and the barriers that Black members have endured, that Black members have felt.”
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It’s all about the context, the hearing has heard over and over again.
It was the morning of Nov. 29, 2022, and Clarke and her fellow panelists had been given the questions and answers’ rubric they would be using for that day’s promotions interviews. Before they began, she was in the senior officers’ lounge and decided to lobby for the six Black members she’d been mentoring.
But while others were advocating for their own mentees during that 15-minute conversation, she claims she was made to feel “invisible.”
“I was very upset, I was very frustrated, I was beside myself,” Clarke recalled. “It was my tipping point.”
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While alone with the question and answers, she photographed them and leaked them to three of her mentees, including two who had interviews later that day and, Hutchison said, were now armed with the right answers.
To which Clarke replied quite disingenuously, “I sent them to level the playing field but I don’t know if they looked at their phones.”
“It’s certainly not looking like a level playing field to other officers who didn’t have the answers given to them beforehand, correct?” Hutchison asked.
“I don’t know if they had the answers or not,” Clarke replied.
“Well, are you suggesting there were other officers involved in cheating the way you were?” the prosecutor pressed.
“I’m just suggesting that the process is unfair,” Clarke responded, pointing to a Deloitte study released in 2022 that found complaints from TPS officers that the promotion process wasn’t transparent and the white, male-dominated leadership was promoting others who looked like them.
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“I’ve taken accountability. It’s not an excuse. I’ve owned it,” she said of her misconduct. “What I am saying to you is you cannot be setting the stage to say that this is the first time. This is not. And I’m not going to allow that to be the statement today.”
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Clarke pleaded guilty last fall to seven counts under the Police Services Act. In addition to photographing and texting the questions and answers to her candidates on Nov. 29 and Nov. 30, 2022, she’s also admitted that she continued mentoring a family friend, despite the order that all meetings must end a week before the interviews began, and didn’t disclose a conflict when she was one of the panelists at his interview.
It also wasn’t a momentary lapse in judgment.
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“This course of misconduct stretches over two weeks, correct?” the prosecutor suggested.
“Yes, and systemic racism and unfairness has been taking place over two decades of my career,” Clarke retorted.
Defence lawyer Joseph Markson is asking that Clarke, who has an otherwise unblemished record, be demoted to the rank of inspector for 12 to 18 months and then automatically reinstated to superintendent.
The prosecutor wants her demoted two ranks to staff-sergeant and then be required to reapply to superintendent after two years.
Whatever the decision, the saddest part, perhaps, is that Clarke’s good intentions have so spectacularly backfired – the cheating scandal has tarnished her sterling reputation and has been seized upon by racists to question all non-white hires.
If she doesn’t receive a serious demotion for her misconduct, the police rank-and-file will claim senior management gets away with a slap on the wrist. If the penalty is harsh, her community will see it as yet another example of anti-Black racism in the police service.
Hutchison will make his final submissions on Friday.
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