In 2010, 23-year old constable Darius Garda was among several Toronto police officers who shot and killed Wieslaw Duda, a 49-year-old Mississauga father of two, while he was experiencing a mental health crisis in the Port Lands. After spending the next six years struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the incident, and trying unsuccessfully to get the condition covered through insurance, Garda drowned himself in Lake Ontario, close to the site of Duda’s death.
In response to these types of officer deaths, Toronto Police Service coined a new phrase, saying it happened “because of the line of duty.” If line of duty refers to an officer’s on-the-job responsibilities, this new phrasing quietly expands what counts as the job. The psychological consequences of crisis response are folded into the work itself, instead of questioning whether officers should be doing that work at all.
But in the wake of the police killings of Ejaz Choudry and D’Andre Campbell, and Regis Korchinsky-Paquet’s deadly fall from her apartment balcony during a police encounter, the Toronto Community Crisis Service (TCCS) launched in 2022 as a non-police alternative for mental health crisis response.
In its first two years, the TCCS responded to 10,339 calls, resolving 78% of them without police involvement on a budget that amounted to 2% of what TPS receives. In 2024, Chief Demkiw argued that this was exactly why the police budget needed to increase: TCCS was freeing up officer capacity, but that capacity was immediately absorbed by other demands. When Mayor Olivia Chow tried to propose a $7.2 million increase instead of the $20 million the Board had requested, Chief Demkiw warned that it would be an “unacceptable risk to public safety,” and Chow eventually caved.
Toronto’s police budget has grown almost every year for the past decade, hitting a new record this year with a $93 million increase — roughly 90% of which covers salaries and benefits.
This time, it was Mayor Chow who justified the increase, saying that even though crime rates and 911 wait times have decreased, “there’s more to do.”
If that reasoning doesn’t hold up, consider the gap between perception and reality: a 2025 Liaison Strategies survey found that 72% of Torontonians believed that homicide had actually increased that year, even though the rate was at its lowest since 1986. Respondents held the same belief about other categories, including assaults, robberies, vehicle theft and hate crimes.
Chow’s statement makes more sense in the context of a 2024 poll that rated her handling of crime among the lowest of any issue category, and the fact that 2026 is an election year.
But with a police budget that has ballooned to $1.43 billion while other city services strain for funding, it’s worth asking where that perception came from.
The tail that wags the dog
In 2022, the Toronto Police Association — which represents staff, not the service itself — hired Meaghan Gray as their Chief Communications Officer after she’d spent 18 years working in comms for the Toronto Police Service. She went from managing TPS’s public image to doing PR for the members’ association negotiating against them.
The Association had already contracted Blue Door Communications as their agency, and together the three parties ran a recruitment campaign that Blue Door called “the first joint venture between the Toronto Police Association and the Toronto Police Service.” The unconventional nature of that partnership becomes clearer when you consider what came next: In 2024, salary negotiations between the Association and the Toronto Police Services Board broke down and went to arbitration for the first time in 16 years.
Blue Door and TPA launched a pressure campaign called “Keep Toronto Safe,” targeting Mayor Chow and the Board with a purpose-built website, provocative ads and flyers in mailboxes across the city blaming slow emergency response times on a lack of personnel.
Later that year, the Board approved a $46.2 million budget increase and a hiring plan guaranteeing 720 new officers over the next two years. A new five-year collective agreement followed in spring, adding another $72 million in salary and benefit commitments to the 2026 budget alone.
Unlike the police, the public interest side of the debate — a handful of councillors, the City’s Auditor General, and a network of community organizations — doesn’t have the communications budget to push back.
Meanwhile, police budget increases flow directly from property taxes, which means TPA wins either way. If you’re worried about crime, they need more officers; if you’re worried about your tax bill, it’s because of city mismanagement.
What $1.43 billion gets us
A recent report co-authored by law professor Sunil Gurmukh and criminologist Scot Wortley revealed that in 627 Ontario court rulings between early 2015 and mid-2025, police were found to have violated the Charter 1,000 times. Of these cases, 70% led to evidence exclusion, reduced sentences or charges being dropped. The Toronto police were singled out for racial profiling, false testimony and a 20-year failure to bring accused to bail court within 24 hours — what courts have attributed to a “culture of complacency.”
So what can be done? While the police budget is passed in council, strong mayor powers don’t extend to it. That means a council majority is the most direct lever we have to stop the endless budget increases. In the meantime, we’re paying for the propaganda that’s defunding our essential city services. The least we can do is notice.
Read our timeline of key moments in the Toronto police’s long argument with accountability
This article appeared in the 2026 Apr/May issue.