Adrian Humphreys Monday, Aug. 17, 2015

Nine years ago, when he completed police college, Constable Raphael Waugh, now 42, returned to Regent Park, his childhood neighbourhood as a cop.  Laura Pedersen/National Post

There were times growing up in Regent Park, the country’s largest and oldest social housing project, when Raphael Waugh brushed too close to violence, poverty and fear. When a troubled childhood friend was shot dead by police as he goofed around with a sword on the street. When he saw kids selling drugs to other kids. Or when his mother, a Jamaican immigrant raising the family alone, leaned on food banks to feed him and his two siblings.

He reflects on that now when patrolling Regent Park as a constable with 51 Division, the Toronto police designation for a bustling, cluttered section of the city’s core.

And these days, as community activists decry police carding, a stop-and-check protocol criticized for disproportionately targeting black men, Waugh also reflects on the times he was stopped by cops as a teenager walking in his neighbourhood when — he swears — he wasn’t up to any mischief.

Nine years ago, when he completed police college, Waugh, now 42, asked to return to Regent Park as a cop.

He wanted to “go back to the community where I grew up, and to be able to go back as a police officer in a place where there is a lot of mistrust with police,” he says before heading out on patrol in his dark blue uniform and bulletproof vest, his gun and radio clipped tight.

As Black Lives Matter protests rage and activists rail against police shootings, as officers are criticized for their handling of the mentally ill, and as a citizen’s movement swells to videotape and scrutinize officers, Toronto police constables like Waugh and his colleagues at 51 Division are on display like never before.

The police brass are acutely aware of these public relations challenges, perhaps accounting for the quick agreement to the National Post’s request for access to 51 — to its leaders, to its rank and file, to its station, to its protocols and to the madcap pageantry of life on the streets it is asked to serve and protect. 

It allows us a peek into what it means to police.

It is not yet dark and already 51 Division police patrol officers are clogged with calls. Their radios and computer screens spit endless bursts of misery, anger and discontent.

A shooting on Queen St. a few hours earlier is choking an already suffocating system — a victim teeters on the brink and a gunman is at large but new calls keep coming, cries for help, big and small. A man with a syringe is threatening to stab passersby. A child abuse complaint requires a Hungarian-speaking officer. A cyclist has been doored.

There is also a man walking in traffic near Carlton and Jarvis trying to open the doors of passing cars, a dispatcher says in a flat, steady tone.

Sgt. Danny Vega, near the intersection, suddenly brakes and springs out of his cruiser, waving a warning to drivers as he grabs a gormless man from the busy street who is clutching a tin of lacquer thinner like it’s his first-born child.

He’s been huffing — soaking a tissue in thinner and sucking brain-numbing fumes from it. White foaming bubbles dribble from his mouth and cling to his chin. Vega tells him to drop his thinner-soaked tissue but he doesn’t want to.

“Drop it or I’ll arrest you,” Vega says.

The man lets go but as soon as Vega’s attention is elsewhere he tries to retrieve it. Vega kicks it out of reach as he calls over his radio for an ambulance.

This kind of call isn’t surprising. 51 Division, which encompasses Regent Park and Moss Park, is an area with many grim measurements. Among them: the highest density of homeless shelters in the country and the highest volume of violent incidents per square kilometre in the city.

Toronto Police Sgt. Daniel Vega (left) and Toronto Paramedics tend to a homeless man who required hospital transport at the corner of Church Street and Queen Street in Toronto, on Friday, June 19, 2015.  Laura Pedersen/National Post

The division itself has a mythic place in the city’s history, although not always in a good way. In years past it was variously seen as a stomping ground for aggressive cops looking to beat sense into senseless situations and as a proving ground for newbies looking to face policing’s toughest test.

The division’s old, fortified station on Regent St. — some called it a bunker, others a garrison — was seen by residents as such an adversarial outpost for outsiders they nicknamed it Fort Apache.

That old station is gone now. Today, 51 is based in an artfully reclaimed gas purification plant at Parliament and Front, built in 1898. Sandblasted walls and a bright, glass entranceway greet visitors instead of the old station’s barbed wire and barred windows.

And the kinds of cops inside the building have changed. Vega, for example, is gay, Uruguayan, and with an intricate sleeve tattoo from wrist to bicep, he looks more like someone an old-school cop might be busting than a police supervisor. None of it has stood in his way, although he admits he wore a long-sleeved shirt to his promotion interview, just to play it safe.

But revitalization can take time, and officers here still sometimes make headlines for the worst reasons. Earlier this year three constables were charged with a gang sex assault in a case still before the courts.

Supt. Elizabeth Byrnes is 51’s unit commander. She comes from a policing family — her father joined the force in 1947 and her sister in 1971, when female officers weren’t allowed to carry guns.

Byrnes, 53, took over the division last year. She seems genuinely full of hope for the area, and her officers, while acknowledging that she sits atop a powder keg that could explode in any number of ways.

When she reads internal reports from her officers, she often thinks, “This could have ended very badly,” she says; but usually it doesn’t.

Laura Pedersen/National PostToronto Police Sgt. Daniel Vega and Toronto Paramedics tend to a man who was initially stopped due to a call that he was trying to open car doors near the intersection of Jarvis Street and Church Street in Toronto, on Friday, June 19, 2015. 

Her officers’ training – which now includes annual sessions on de-escalation, race relations and mental health issues – helps. But she also praises them for their intelligence and empathy. “The greatest tool they’ve got is this,” she says, tapping her head.

* * *
Under Byrne’s command is a labyrinth of people and machines.

The name of each employee is printed on strips of magnetic tape that are endlessly juggled on a white board in her office as she seeks to balance staffing on a tightrope that’s burning at both ends.

One increasing part of her juggling act is shifting resources to what some call “soft policing.” In 51 this includes designated neighbourhood officers, four in Regent Park and four in Moss Park.

Waugh was one of the first four Regent Park neighbourhood officers a few years ago before moving to primary response. The Moss Park team, including Const. Sue Crawford, started in September.

“We’re not rushing around from call to call trying to keep up with everything that is going on,” says Crawford, 50, who joined the force after an unsatisfying career in banking.

“We’re interacting as closely as possible with residents.

“Policing has evolved and working with the community has become such an essential part. The loss of trust through the years is something that we have to work hard to get back and this is a really essential way to do it,” she says.

Laura Pedersen/National PostToronto Police Sgt. Daniel Vega responds to a call at Church Street and Queen Street in Toronto, on Friday, June 19, 2015. 

Often this means her job looks more like social work and addictions counseling than policing. But “it’s policing if it reduces our calls for services,” says Byrne.

Still, the pointy stick of the operation remains the primary response platoons, the police cruisers that are on the street around the clock, every day of the year.

Staff Sergeant John Spanton oversees one platoon. At 61, he is the epitome of old-school cop: white and white haired, raised in the suburbs and rarely venturing into the city’s core.

His first posting, 31 years ago, was to patrol 51. At the time he was shocked to see the intense concentration of services for the homeless and the addicted, and the people using them.

Now, after returning from years spent elsewhere he is astounded by what’s changed. Division 51 still maintains its grim statistics – but it also includes the million-dollar gentrified Victorian houses of Cabbagetown, the city’s booming Gay Village, condos and renovated lofts bringing waves of new residents to some of the city’s oldest streets.

Many of the calls for his officers stem from awkward interactions between the new homeowners and the old homeless.

“Look at the stores that are opening. None of that was here before. I can’t even afford to shop on King Street. Meanwhile, across the road in the park, there’s two homeless guys in a tent. You’ve got to know that’s there.

“It’s not going away, he’s lived here longer than you have. There is a level of enforcement but also a level of education [needed].”

Laura Pedersen/National PostToronto Police Sgt. Daniel Vega drives through downtown Toronto, on Friday, June 19, 2015. 

As Spanton talks, though, he grows anxious about the calls piling up under his watch. He already knows some won’t be answered tonight, leading to inevitable complaints in the morning.

* * *

Back on the streets, many of those calls include the letters EDP, an abbreviation for “emotionally disturbed person.” One call is for a troubled transgendered teen at a health clinic. But when Vega arrives in the parking lot, the most EDP there seems to be a social worker.

She needs an ambulance not police or cameras, she says, angrily sending Vega away.

“Sometimes social workers or mental health workers don’t like us. Sometimes they only see us as the people who kill their clients,” he says, shaking his head.

Many of the officers at 51 seem equally perplexed by the furor over carding. They don’t see it as harassment or racially charged, not the way they do it, they say.

“It’s important to realize the context,” says Byrne. “We need to make sure officers understand it is not random, it is people being investigated. If an officer observes something and it seems important, it should be noted.”

Says Stanton, “In 31 years, I’ve not seen carding the way it is described [by critics].”

And Waugh, the black constable carded by cops a handful of times himself when he was growing up in Regent Park?

“If it is done correctly it is a very, very important police tool and I see the benefits of it. I see the benefits of it, from the aspect of the job, that other people, from the aspect of the community, don’t see,” he says.

And just as much as he wants his colleagues to understand his community, he wants his community to understand his colleagues.

Policing in Canada: From grim statistics to protests, what it's like to patrol the streets of Toronto

There were times growing up in Regent Park, the country's largest and oldest social housing project, when Raphael Waugh brushed too close to violence, poverty and fear. When a troubled childhood friend was shot dead by police as he goofed around with a sword on the street. When he saw kids selling drugs to other kids.…