Black share of Toronto police force incidents rises to 46%

People perceived as Black were involved in 45.7 per cent of the incidents in which Toronto police used force in 2025, up from 40.4 per cent in 2023, according to data from Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General, even as the total number of incidents fell by more than a quarter.

The figures come from use-of-force reports that Ontario police services must file with the ministry. Under the province’s Anti-Racism Act, those reports record the race an officer perceives each person to be. Officers must file one in situations that include drawing a handgun in the presence of a member of the public, so not every incident involves physical contact. The ministry released the 2025 data in September.

Canada News Media compared each large service’s numbers with the makeup of the population it polices, using the 2021 Census. Black residents make up 9.6 per cent of Toronto’s population. In 2025 people perceived as Black were involved in 418 of the service’s 915 use-of-force incidents. That is 4.8 times their share of the population, up from 4.2 times in 2023, when the service reported 1,248 incidents.

The number of Toronto incidents involving people perceived as white fell faster over the same period, from 498 to 322, than those involving people perceived as Black, from 504 to 418.

The pattern held across the region, though its size varied. In Peel, where Black residents are 9.9 per cent of the population of Mississauga and Brampton, people perceived as Black were involved in 31.1 per cent of incidents in 2025, or 3.2 times their population share, down from 3.6 times in 2023. Peel’s reported incidents roughly doubled between 2023 and 2024, from 483 to 963, so its trend should be read with care. Ottawa was essentially unchanged, at 2.9 times compared with 3.0 times.

The widest gaps were in York and Halton regions, where Black residents are about three per cent of the population but people perceived as Black were involved in 28.0 and 31.6 per cent of incidents. That is about 10 times the population share in York and about nine times in Halton. Those services also report far fewer incidents, 239 in York and 171 in Halton in 2025, so small changes move the percentages.

Durham Regional Police gave its own count. The service said its public data, published through its Use of Force Dashboard, which it called “the authoritative source for Service data,” records 215 use-of-force incidents in 2025, with 65 involving at least one person perceived as Black. That is about 30.2 per cent, or 3.1 times the 9.6 per cent share of Durham Region’s population that is Black. The provincial dataset used for the other services in this story shows 210 incidents for Durham in 2025, also with 65 involving a person perceived as Black. The service did not explain the gap.

The service’s 2025 annual use-of-force report to its police board, dated March 2026, which it attached to its reply, gives a third figure: 221 incidents involving a subject. The service did not address that difference either.

Durham’s 2023 figure, 62 of 184 incidents or 33.7 per cent, comes from the provincial data. That was 3.5 times the population share. Because the comparison with 2025 crosses sources, it is approximate. Counted by people rather than incidents, the service’s annual report shows 74 of 262 subjects perceived as Black in 2023, or 28.2 per cent, and 95 of 298 in 2025, or 31.9 per cent.

Across Ontario’s 45 police services, people perceived as Black were involved in 23.4 per cent of 6,092 use-of-force incidents in 2025, according to the provincial data. Black people make up 5.5 per cent of the province’s population.

A spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service wrote, “I can’t provide comment on data that is not from the Toronto Police Service.” The spokesperson said the service collects and publishes its own race-based data, and pointed to its race and identity-based data webpage for answers to the rest of our questions. That reply did not say whether the service disputes the counts in this story, and did not address why the Black share of incidents rose while the total fell.

In a follow-up on Nov. 4, the service pointed to 2020 to 2024 figures on its race-based data dashboard. It said use of force remains a low-frequency event, at about one per cent of enforcement actions each year, and that arrests grew 52 per cent between 2020 and 2024 while strip searches fell 97 per cent. It said most arrests followed a call to 911 or a non-emergency line and were not police-initiated.

The service said it does not use census population as a benchmark. It said it uses a multiple-benchmark approach that first looks at how likely groups are to come into enforcement contact with police compared with their presence in the city, then uses that enforcement population to look at differences in outcomes such as use of force. The service said the ministry endorses this approach. Asked what it has done since its first race-based reports, it said its work over the last year focused on mental health crises, with a working group developing solutions to racial disparities in those outcomes, and pointed to a final report on its website. The follow-up also did not say whether the service disputes our counts, and did not address the 2023 to 2025 change in the Black share of incidents.

Peel Regional Police said its latest use-of-force report, which it described as containing the most current data available, will be presented to the Peel Police Service Board on Nov. 27, 2026, and that it would be in a better position to respond after that meeting. It encouraged our reporter to watch the presentation. It did not answer questions about the figures in this story, including a follow-up sent Oct. 30 that asked whether it disputes our counts and whether the rise in reported incidents from 2023 to 2024 reflected a change in reporting practice.

York Regional Police said on Oct. 30 that it had received our questions and was reviewing them, but could not meet our original deadline of Nov. 3. It asked for more details about the story, which we provided, and we extended its deadline to Nov. 6 at 5 p.m. ET. As of Nov. 3, when this story was prepared for publication, it had not answered the questions.

Halton Regional Police did not respond by the Nov. 3 deadline to questions sent Oct. 28. Neither did the Ottawa Police Service, which was asked the same day.

Durham police said census data “provides important population context, but it has limitations” when used as a direct benchmark. Not everyone who interacts with the service is necessarily a resident of the region, it said, and population data does not account for how often or under what circumstances police and the public interact. Population comparisons “cannot, on their own, explain differences in use-of-force data,” the service said.

The change between 2023 and 2025 “should be interpreted with caution,” the service said, adding that the available data does not support a definitive conclusion about what contributed to it.

The service said every use-of-force incident is reviewed, including body-worn camera footage where applicable, to assess whether the force was proportionate to the threat and circumstances officers faced. It said its Equity and Inclusion Unit, Community Response teams and frontline divisions work with community members, and that it is examining ways to strengthen its collection and analysis of race-based data.

Durham police said use of force occurred in 0.096 per cent of its police interactions in 2025; its annual report gives 0.099 per cent. The service also said it recorded a rise in armed-subject and weapons-related calls between 2024 and 2025, which it said pose an elevated risk to officers and the public and often require officers to display or use force. Its annual report shows use-of-force incidents categorized as weapons incidents rose from 39 to 53 over that period, and that 72.8 per cent of the 298 subjects in 2025 were perceived to be armed, compared with 64.1 per cent of 245 in 2024.

Even so, the service said, use-of-force data “warrants careful examination, including consideration of whether different communities are experiencing different outcomes.”

The province itself cautions against comparing use of force with census population. In its technical report, the ministry said it “cannot calculate racial disproportionality for police use of force that accounts for how often members of different racial groups come into contact with police.” It said a resident benchmark can overcount disproportionality for groups with more police contact and undercount it for groups with less. People subject to force also may not live where it happened: the ministry said they may commute, pass through on vacation or be apprehended along provincial highway corridors, which can matter in suburban regions such as York, Halton and Durham.

The data describe disparities. They do not show why force was used in any incident, that any officer acted because of race, or that any incident was unjustified. Race in the reports is as perceived by officers, not as people identify themselves, and an incident is not a person: one person can appear in several incidents.

The findings add to earlier official work. In 2020 the Ontario Human Rights Commission found Toronto police charged Black people at 3.9 times the rate of white people between 2013 and 2017. Toronto police’s own arrest data for 2020 and 2021 show Black people were 26.8 per cent of people arrested. The rate of strip searches after arrest fell from 22.2 per cent in 2020 to 2.1 per cent in 2021, and over the two years it was similar for Black and white people, at 13.9 and 12.9 per cent.

Questions about race and public institutions extend beyond Ontario’s police services. We reported this week that Correctional Service Canada research found Black men were twice as likely to start federal custody at maximum security, and in September that the RCMP’s race-data pledge had no start date for Halifax.

How we did this. We downloaded the Ministry of the Solicitor General’s 2023, 2024 and 2025 police use-of-force datasets from the Ontario Data Catalogue and counted incidents by police service using the ministry’s rule: an incident counts for a racial group if any officer perceived any person involved as belonging to it. Our counts match the ministry’s published 2025 provincial total and its shares for Toronto, Peel, York and Halton; for Durham the same method gives 31.0 per cent on 210 incidents, where the ministry published 30.9. We divided each group’s share of incidents by its share of the population in the 2021 Census for the area each service polices (for Peel, Mississauga and Brampton), using unrounded census shares. The exception is Durham’s 2025 ratio, which uses the service’s own count and divides 30.2 by the rounded 9.6 per cent; with the unrounded 9.55 per cent it is 3.17. The ministry says 2023 to 2025 data cannot be compared with earlier years because its reporting form changed, so we compare 2023 with 2025 only. We sent questions to the six police services on Oct. 28. We did not put questions to the ministry; its position here comes from its published technical report. Our data and calculations are available on request.

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Sources: Ontario Data Catalogue, Police Use of Force Race-Based Data; Durham Regional Police Use of Force Dashboard; Toronto Police Service race and identity-based data; Toronto Police Service arrests and strip searches open data; Statistics Canada, 2021 Census Profile; Peel Police Service Board meeting livestream, Nov. 27, 2026.

Edited by Harry Miller