On August 1, 2024, the Toronto Police Service (TPS) launched a three month pilot project titled Project Magnify that increased the presence of neighborhood community officers in Divisions 14, 31 and 43. The ostensible purpose of this initiative is to mitigate the rising levels of gun violence in select areas. The main difference, if you can call it that, between Project Magnify and past TPS attempts of addressing such harm is that officers will now be equipped with flashing red and blue lights not just on their cars but also on their uniforms. These devices are referred to as “Guardian Angels.”
Little has been said in the media about this development other than a brief CityNews video and a Toronto Sun article, both of which simply regurgitate the TPS narrative handed to them. Not surprising, considering the mainstream media and the state work in conjunction to uphold the sanctity of policing.
What is actually needed in response to this latest iteration of “crime prevention” projects is analysis beyond what TPS claims to be true. In other words, we must look critically at Project Magnify to understand not only its ulterior motives and question its justifications, but to expose it as merely a reconfiguration of past practices TPS claims to have renounced.
Without such critique and activism, the police will continue to take advantage of violence produced by inequality, white supremacy and colonialism to legitimize their true purpose: the protection of capital through the surveillance and maintenance of poverty. In this sense, Project Magnify is no different from its predecessors.
The illusion of public support for police
The first person quoted in the news release about Project Magnify is police chief Myron Demkiw, who says, “At a series of town halls held late last year, the community made it clear they want to see police in their neighbourhoods, especially those most affected by gun violence.”
This sentiment is echoed by Superintendent Andy Singh, who says in the launch video, “The community said loud and clear that they loved the presence of police officers.”
What do we make of such statements? Majority opinion after all is vital when implementing policy. Is the increase of community officers therefore justified on the basis of popular consensus?
The first issue at hand is that the only perspective we have of what happened at town hall meetings comes not from community members, but from police themselves. One can imagine how different the tone would be if we heard from even one Torontonian who challenged TPS’s account of events. This is an integral point often made by civil right lawyer Alec Karakatsanis, who analyzes how the media strategically chooses whose voices to both include and omit in their constant vindications of policing.
Secondly, to quote Stuart Hall, “Politics does not reflect majorities, it constructs them.” Change does not come from repeating what is already normal, already popular. Historical progressive movements occurred precisely from challenging the status quo of their respective eras.
The increase of resources to the Toronto Police, whether it be more funding or officers, is by every measure a reality that has faced little scrutiny by people in power over the past 40 years. Those fighting against an increase in police presence follow in the line of those who fought for a better world before them and understand that doing what is right will always triumph over doing what is popular.
But perhaps most important of all, what is hidden behind the veil of this alleged hegemonic acceptance of police presence is the obfuscation of the real issues at hand. When Torontonians say they want more community officers, what they really mean is that they want to feel safe. The popular conception of safety however has been shaped by capitalist ideology, which frames the police as the sole solution to harm.
If the majority at these town halls were to bring up that they think housing should be a human right; that food bank usage shouldn’t be skyrocketing; that inequality should be addressed through the redistribution of wealth; that the criminalization of mental health and homelessness should end; all of which are tangible and make society safer, would the police acknowledge these demands on the basis of popularity? Of course not. They would brush it off and say these concerns are outside of their control.
But it is in their control, because everything is connected. Money given to the police is money taken away from vital services that make safe communities. Police exist to facilitate the harm that results from such theft, something they cannot outright admit. So they display this manufacturing of consent as a masquerade to conceal that their decisions have nothing to do with public input but instead with their own interests of maintaining inequality.
The state holds our desire for safety hostage by depriving communities of well-being through austerity and defunding, creating disorder and fear, then inserts the cops and acts like it resembles any form of justice. Dispossessed residents are then asked if they support more police presence, as if they have a choice. It is support contingent upon fear, not love.
Community policing, surveillance and counterinsurgency
Arguments about the purpose of initiatives as Project Magnify are often reduced to whether police presence prevents crime. When framed through this narrow perspective, the true intentions of policing become obscured.
In her book, Fearing the Immigrant, Parastou Saberi details how the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), now a disgraced initiative remembered mainly for racist carding practices, was formed in 2006 coinciding with the rise in gun violence in neighbourhoods where many racialized and immigrant communities live. What drove the creation of TAVIS however was not the TPS’s desire to combat gun violence, but rather to resolve the crises of legitimacy of police presence in racialized communities.
The early 2000s in Toronto was a tumultuous time where immigrants found themselves at the center of a moral panic relating to their potential insurgence against both their living conditions and treatment from law enforcement. The ruling class feared an uprising similar to the France rebellions in 2005, what Saberi labeled the “Paris problem.”
Saberi correctly argues that TAVIS, alongside previous community policing initiatives in Toronto, acted as a means to increase surveillance on communities susceptible to rebellion against their own subjugation brought about by neoliberal austerity. Once integrated into the neighborhood under the facade of “friendly” community policemen, TAVIS officers would then utilize counter-insurgent methods to divide the population against one another intending to further diminish class consciousness.
For instance, Saberi describes how TAVIS officers would take advantage of pre-existing tensions between Asian and African communities to convince both that occupation and control of the other was necessary. Furthermore, TAVIS would deliberately put youth from rival neighborhoods into one cell when arrested, with the aim that tensions would escalate after they were released in order to draw out more children to arrest. These strategies operated upon the dynamic of inclusion and exclusion, reproducing distinctions between those considered loyal and disloyal to police interests.
One would have be blind to not see the glaring similarities between the implementation of TAVIS in 2006 and Project Magnify in 2024. While the TAVIS program ended in 2016, community policing in Toronto has continued through the Neighbourhood Community Officer Program, which now operates in 51 of Toronto’s 158 neighbourhoods. It is these neighbourhood community officers who are showcased in the Project Magnify launch video wearing the devices referred to as “Guardian Angels.”
Just as in 2006, TPS and media are taking advantage of rising gun violence resulting from poverty, inequality and racism to increase their presence in dispossessed neighbourhoods. Division 14, 31 and 43, the areas Project Magnify targets, are located in predominantly racialized and immigrant communities. For years, these areas have been ravaged by neoliberal austerity and socio-spatial segregation. The moral panic against migrants persists, with the right and media alike calling for their further expulsion.
It is only a matter of time before TPS will have to reconcile yet another crisis in their legitimacy. It is imperative that we recognize these periods of crisis and combat them through the continued contestation of the superficiality of police and media rhetoric. This will in turn lead more people towards the truth of police, that they will never be able to address violence because they exist to uphold the very conditions that lead to such violence. We must look past the veil of copaganda. Only then will we realize that no salvation will come from these guardian angels.
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