Bill Blair (police chief)

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Bill Blair

William Sterling (Bill) Blair is the current Chief of Police of Toronto, Ontario. He was appointed on April 6, 2005, and assumed his duties on April 26. He took over from interim chief Mike Boyd (who had served for just over a month following the end of Julian Fantino's contract.)

Blair joined the police force in 1974 as a constable in Regent Park. He progressed quickly to drug enforcement, including work as an undercover officer. Later, he held administrative posts in the force, including in community policing, in corporate communications and as interim deputy chief.

Blair studied at the University of Toronto, obtaining his degree in criminology in 1981, and at the FBI Academy in 1990. More recently he received a certificate in police leadership from the Rotman School of Business.

In 1995, Blair volunteered to head the force's 51 Division following a wildcat strike of police officers brought on by a number of allegations of police misconduct, including the death of a homeless man under police custody, allegations of assault by another homeless man, and a racial profiling incident in which two officers in the division, in what they described as a "high-risk takedown", ordered two black men at gunpoint to get out of their car on Dundas St. E. (The men, one of whom was Citytv reporter Dwight Drummond, were forced to the ground and handcuffed. They were not charged, and later released.)

In August of that year, an altercation with Regent Park residents (within Blair's division) resulted in eight injured officers and three arrests. Nearly 50 cruisers and 100 officers were on scene. Residents alleged that bystanders, including children, were attacked with pepper spray. In response, Blair championed the community policing model.

Blair is widely seen as more open to community dialogue than Fantino. On June 26, 2005, Blair became the first chief of police in Toronto's history to march in the city's Gay Pride parade. This was considered an important symbolic gesture to Toronto's LGBT community, where Fantino had been conspicuously absent. The 2005 festivities also marked the 25th anniversary of Pride Week, which evolved out of the community's opposition to police conduct in the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids.

Blair's progressive stance has gained him a great deal of respect in the community. However, this has cost him some backlash in the conservative media who have criticized him as ineffective and weak, and accused him of not doing enough to curtail the spree of gun-related crime that affected the city in the summer of 2005.