Toronto police used guns, Tasers and physical restraint less in 2023 than previous years despite a growing city population, a larger police workforce and more calls for service, a new report found.
In 2023, police used force 1,322 times — a nearly five per cent drop from 2022 and a 12 per cent drop from 2019, according to a report presented to the Toronto Police Service (TPS) Board on Tuesday.
The drop came even as Toronto’s population expanded by over four per cent and the police workforce grew by nearly three per cent compared to 2022.
Police were also busier in 2023, with calls for service increasing by six per cent. The rate of violent calls also increased by six per cent while arrests jumped nearly 22 per cent.
The report’s findings are “notable when considering the demands for policing have increased,” said Svina Dhaliwal, chief administrative officer for the TPS.
Overall, the TPS reported its officers rarely use force.
Of the 407,000 calls for service in 2023, the 1,322 instances of reported force represent less than one per cent of all calls. That number has been slightly declining since 2019, the report claims.
Dhaliwal said that’s “positive news” but the force has “more work to do.”
“For example, by better linking the information to our race-based data program and by continuously examining the root causes to minimize these types of incidents,” she said at Tuesday’s TPS board meeting.
The most common type of force reported was pointing a gun, which the TPS said happened over 570 times, or in about 43 per cent of all reported incidents.
The use of conducted energy weapons, commonly known as Tasers, was the second most common, with over 390 reports, or about 30 per cent of all incidents. Physical restraint was third with over 350 incidents, equivalent to 27 per cent.
Police actually fired their guns 24 times in 2023, down from 28 times in 2022, as noted in the report. Over half of those instances were related to injured, suffering or aggressive animals.
Of the 24 times police officers reported firing their guns, it was at a person 38 per cent of the time. In 20 per cent of those cases, TPS reported the person had an “edged” weapon, such as a knife. In just under 12 per cent of the cases, the person was in a vehicle.
Police only once discharged their firearms at someone with a gun, and once more in response to someone with another kind of unspecified weapon.
Nearly eight per cent of shots fired by officers were accidental, the report notes.
Overall Taser use rates dropped among the TPS force, though the total number of times a Taser was discharged increased compared to previous years.
In 2019, Toronto police had 1,867 licenced officers who used Tasers 631 times. In 2023, Tasers were used 642 times among the 3,500 officers with a licence.
The deployment rate — the number of times Tasers were used compared to the number of officers allowed to use them — dropped to just over 18 per cent in 2023 from 34 per cent in 2019.
