On August 13, 2025, Kristin Rushowy wrote in the Toronto Star:

The controversial police-in-schools initiative is not offered at every board — Toronto’s police chief has said there are no plans to reinstate it in the city — but the memo, sent out Tuesday by Education Minister Paul Calandra and Deputy Minister Denise Cole, says in those that do, a “summary of the program’s structure and objectives” should be included. School resource officers must be covered in all boards, even if they don’t run the program.

Activities, they wrote, should contain “information about the role of police in providing high-quality, age-appropriate educational public safety presentations to students on subjects such as cyber-crime, human trafficking, road safety and other areas of local importance. Information should also be provided about the role of police in the school community, to support trust building between educators, policing services, students and parents/guardians.”

[…]

It also says schools need to work “co-operatively with police partners” on the two yearly lockdown drills, keeping staff up to date on procedures — and “consider adding a bomb threat drill as part of their emergency evacuation drills and that school personnel should work co-operatively with police partners on these drills.”

It isn’t surprising that such news would “break” a few weeks out from the new school year. I have become accustomed to changes in policy being revealed at less than opportune times by this Ontario government.

The public English school board in Ottawa (the OCDSB)had SROs in schools when I first started teaching here but within a few years they were taken out after exhaustive consulting. Ottawa’s police force (the OPS) has had a storied past of negative interactions and incidents while the SRO programme was in place. The Asilu Collective did a lot of work compiling a report on this matter (which can be helpfully read here).

If teachers are going to be mandated to learn about the roles of police in our communities I believe it’s important we understand the scope of what that means. To that end I’m writing this post to educate the average educator on why this is a bad idea.

I will throw in a caveat: if you bring this up in staff meetings or during the PA day itself you will probably receive push back one way or another. Teaching in Ontario is an overwhelmingly white profession. Despite lip service teachers pay to equity and progressive politics very few are willing to upset the status quo, rock the boat, or hold disruptive conversations. A majority-white staff will often have no problems with bringing police into a school serving a racialized community, no matter what books they say they’ve read. The intention of this paragraph isn’t to scare you into silence but to hopefully make you more aware of the potential dynamics should you broach this topic.

Furthermore, this post will be written from an Ottawa-heavy lens as that is where I currently teach. I am confident you will find similar articles and arguments in local news sources. I encourage you to find these stories in the communities you’re employed in.

History

My background, such as it is, is in history and I like to tackle problems in the present with a historical understanding. If you were to examine the history of policing in Canada what would be the broad strokes?

• In the early 19th century, the eastern colonies followed policing examples in England. Confederation in 1867 helped nudge the creation of provincial police forces.
• What people now call the RCMP got its start in the 1870s as the North West Mounted Police. The organization got its genesis from Macdonald’s desire to crush Indigenous resistance (and his ongoing genocide) in the west. It was a heavily militarized police force, straying away from England’s Metropolitan Police Act, designed to enforce Canada’s “sovereignty” on its western “frontier”.
• The NWMP (and later the RCMP) contributed to the ongoing genocide of Indigenous Peoples from the 1870s onward. They were often tasked with capturing First Nations children and placing them within the Indian Residential School System, a role ghoulishly immortalized on paraphernalia at the time. If you think the RCMP has seriously strayed from its militarized approach to Indigenous resistance in the 2020s, the documentary ‘Yintah’ is mandatory viewing (you can watch it for free, in Canada, on CBC Gem; Netflix also carries it).
• National and provincial police forces are not the only examples of extreme police behaviours towards Indigenous Peoples. Municipal police forces are just as culpable. One notable example are the so-called “Starlight Tours”. The Saskatoon Police Service apprehended First Nations men on winter nights, drove outside the city limits and then left them to freeze to death. These murders were happening throughout the 90s and 00s.
• Birth Alerts continue to cause trauma in many First Nations communities. Essentially, police and/or social workers are called when someone is deemed “at-risk” and their baby is taken soon after birth. First Nations women are disproportionately targeted by these actions.

I’m of the belief that policing in Canada hasn’t strayed too far from its roots just after Confederation. There is ample evidence of the harm these forces have caused for generations. Bringing US-style tactics and training has only led to further targeting of BIPOC communities. Canada’s police forces have repeatedly trained with, and have been trained by, Israel’s security forces (a country with a similar history of subjugation, oppression, and genocide). The end result is an increasingly militant force capable of more disproportionate responses when confronted with resistance.

Painting police forces as some kind of benevolent actor in Canadian history does a disservice. There is definitely a lot of baggage to unpack when you think of the inter-generational trauma from police actions when you consider putting them into schools.

Role of the Police in the Local Community

It will be difficult to be concise and focused in this section. When I moved to Ottawa from Gangeung, South Korea, I was aghast at the frequent stories of police abuse in the news. If the Ministry of Education wishes for teachers to learn about the police’s role in our schools’ communities then it’s hard to avoid the negative press.

• For anyone teaching in an area of the city with a large Somali population it’s impossible to ignore the OPS’s role in Abdirahman Abdi’s homicide. Abdi was beaten unresponsive by a police officer with reinforced gloves, given no CPR on the scene by police, and then died of heart failure. 1200 blue wristbands with Montsion’s badge number were purchased and distributed by members of the force as a sign of support for Montsion. If you thought Montsion would be a pariah in 2025, not only is he still employed by the OPS, but he makes the most money of any police officer in the entire province. I lead with this fact because it speaks volumes about policing in this city and province.
• Many of us teach students, and teach with colleagues, directly impacted by Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine. Policing students protesting genocide has been a costly venture for the OPS. Physicality towards protestors at these rallies was documented. As public opinion continues to shift against Canada’s role in Israeli war crimes, I can’t see how roughing up those protesting puts the OPS in any kind of endearing light.
• Following the death of Inuk artist Annie Pootoogook, Chris Hrnchiar mocked her online in racist posts. He pleaded guilty in 2016 but continued working for the force while being investigated. According to online sources he continued to be paid by the OPS at least through 2021.
• Yourik Brisebois threatened to kill his ex-wife and wielded a knife in 2020 during the incident. He used to work for the intimate partner violence unit. He was demoted but continues to be employed by the OPS.
• Nermin Mesic threatened to kill a former tenant of his, saying he would feed him “to the fish”. He also threatened this man by saying he would sell his child to cover the rent. He was demoted but continues to be employed by the OPS.
• Marcel Allen broke into a teen’s home and armed with a large kitchen knife. While that incident was in 2018 he has a history of documented incidents going back to 2004. Again, like the others, he remained on the force.
• While off-duty, Pierre Fournier was found guilty of getting into a verbal and physical altercation with a bunch of teens in 2024. The OPS deemed his actions damaging to their reputations.
• Five Somali officers sued the OPS for allegedly racially discriminating them as well as illegally wiretapping them and their families. Later, the OPS announced the arrest of some of the officers’ cousins in a drug bust. The whole situation is messy and the announcement came days before the coroner’s inquest of Abdirahman Abdi.
• Sexual misconduct continues to be an issue within Ottawa’s police force as of August 2025. Earlier this year an officer was charged with sex-crime offenses against a minor.
• After a decades-long study, it was demonstrated that the force disproportionately targeted Black and Middle Eastern drivers for traffic stops. This disproportionate behaviour continued to be evident when using force. Kane Niyondagara was attacked by the force in a case of mistaken identity leading the force to maybe “consider” tracking mistaken identity arrests.

It can be overwhelming going through this list of incidents. It should be remembered that this list is curated; there is a multitude of news stories I could link to make my point clear. The fact the force continues to employ many of the above individuals while the province is trying to get police back into schools should be clearly problematic. This cannot be dismissed as a few bad apples when the misconduct is provided cover by continued employment and six-figure paycheques.

Montsion easily making more than 3x the amount of the highest paid teacher after beating a Black man senseless leading to his death should make people uncomfortable. If the purpose of a system is what it does then what does this say about our police force? Elevating these individuals after such misconduct is nearly impossible to justify (although I am sure some will try).

What About the Past Role of SROs & Police in Schools?

As I wrote above, the OCDSB had SROs actively in schools when I first started working in Ottawa. I never got to know any personally but I would sometimes see them here and there at different sites. They would often be on school grounds with a firearm on their hip.

The incident in Peel where a six year old Black girl was handcuffed at school was often on my mind when I heard of students interacting with police when I was a student teacher. I was waiting for city transit to take me to a school to work when Ottawa police tased and shot Greg Ritchie to death a few metres away(one of the officers involved was involved in a separate incident but was acquitted as well), so I have a particularly dim view of their role to make others safe.

The OCDSB voted to end its relationship with the SRO programme in 2021. The trustees motioned that the Board issue a public apology for the harm done by the SRO programme. However, I can’t remember if the apology was ever produced. References are no longer easily accessible on the OCDSB’s website and only the intention of an apology can be found in archived versions of a page on the Board’s website.

This motion came out of consultations within the OCDSB’s community. Students, parents and staff members came forward as part of the process. The firsthand accounts collected by the Asilu Collective go into detail how students felt interacting with SROs in their schools. You owe it to yourself to read it.

The argument that assigning SROs to schools allows officers to better know the school community doesn’t hold much water when we see the evidence of their actions. Students feeling profiled by police is not how you build a caring and inclusive environment for a healthy school. Why should students be taught to feel safe around police when the police’s actions indicate otherwise?

Saying police play a role in preventing crime doesn’t seem to hold much water in numerous studies from the USA or Canada. Arguing the presence of the police in schools will keep crime down is dubious at best as police most often react to crime after the fact (and as the linked studies suggest, they don’t exactly solve it after the fact either).

In Conclusion

The question we need to be asking as this PA rolls out is: who benefits from this? We are seeing the intentional underfunding of the education system in Ontario while police budgets continue to grow. You can see how stagnant the OCDSB’s budget is between the 2024-2025 school year and the 2025-2026 school year. You can then judge how the OPS’s budgets stack up in comparison. The OPS has around 2400 employees. The OCDSB is projecting around 77,000 students and over 12,000 staff according to its 2025 budget.

Of course, since the Ministry of Education has actively taken over boards across the province, including the OCDSB, many do not have trustees to vote on this issue. I am hoping that unions start providing their members with tips on how to effectively counter yet another infringement.

In the meantime, you are fully capable of arming yourself with knowledge. If Ottawa isn’t your locale, then look for police misconduct reports in your area. Look for firsthand accounts from populations historically oppressed by the police in Canada. Examine which groups actively call for more policing and who benefits from that expansion. Check out ‘Policing Black Lives‘ by Robyn Maynard and ‘The Skin We’re In‘ by Desmond Cole. Don’t be afraid to give dissenting opinions at staff meetings or when contact with the police is suggested. Get involved with political groups within your union to find like-minded individuals. Demand your local representative justify why this Professional Activity is necessary (and let me know their response).