A desperate effort to level the playing field'

Trailblazing cop says she helped officers cheat to counter racism in the force

- WENDY GILLIS

Community members packed a sentencing hearing on Monday for Supt. Stacy Clarke, who pleaded guilty to professional misconduct.

It was, in her own words, "a desperate effort to level the playing field." In November 2021 - after a history-making ascent to become the highest-ranking Black woman in Toronto police - Supt. Stacy Clarke found herself in a powerful position: deciding officer promotions. She'd long advocated for diversifying the force but that day, as she lobbied among her peers for six promising Black candidates she'd mentored, she said she felt her advocacy being ignored.

To Clarke, who knew the "soul-crushing underbelly of police culture," it seemed the candidates didn't stand a chance. Even while wearing the hard-earned white shirt of a senior officer, Clarke felt "invisible," she said.

"I felt at the time that they did not have a fair chance in this process and my own history and experience of racial inequity compounded this feeling," Clarke wrote in a January 2022 internal police report, made public Monday at her sentencing hearing inside Toronto police headquarters.

"I decided that if the opportunity presented itself, I would assist the candidates and make a desperate effort to level the playing field." Monday's proceeding was the first time Clarke has aired her motivations for texting photos of interview questions to six Black officers vying to be promoted to sergeant - an act that erupted in scandal within the Toronto Police Service.

The four-day hearing is being held for arguments on Clarke's penalty after she pleaded guilty last fall to seven counts of professional misconduct under Ontario's Police Services Act, an admission likely to cost her her trail-blazing title.