When Toronto Police Insp. Stacy Clarke saw video of George Floyd, a Black man pleading with a white police officer and saying, “I can’t breathe” as he kneeled on his neck, she says she felt both anger and frustration.
“The fact that I watched a member of my community treated in that manner .. I heard the cry for his mother, I heard the ‘I can’t breathe,’ I saw no emotion whatsoever on the officer’s face,” she said.
“I’ve been a part of such hard work and partnerships in order to try and bridge the gap with our communities and I just knew in that moment it was all gone. It was all gone.”
Clarke is a 22-year Toronto Police Service (TPS) officer and one of only five Black female police inspectors in Canada.
“I think that being a Black female police officer and actually Black members of police organizations have a very unique role in this particular space where we can be that voice of change, of course, in partnership with our other men and women in policing,” she said.
“This can’t be just a Black police officer to fix this. This can’t be a Black community to fix this. Everyone has an equal part and an equal role to play.”
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The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis hit home for Clarke in several different ways she said. First it was as a mother of a 13-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son.
“What really has me struggling these days is I’ve done a lot of community work both within the organization and outside of the organization. I’ve tried to expose them to the goodness of my profession and the goodness of the community and I had a moment where I realized I really was not going to be able to protect them from this,” said Clarke.
“If you’re a parent and you get to a place where you’re like, ‘Oh my goodness, it doesn’t really matter what I do. They’re going to feel this. They’re going to experience this,'” she said.
“It really broke my heart that so many good people are trying to do so many good things and I was still going to have to have these conversations. And even though I was having these conversations, they were still going to feel it, they were still going to experience it.
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“I’m expecting to be talking to them about it and I realized that there wasn’t anything that I could do.”
For Clarke, a proud member of Toronto’s Black community, she said this is all very personal. She said she has had conversations already with her young son to prepare him.
“How do you talk to a police officer? What do you say to a police officer? It’s second nature for him,” she said.
Clarke and 14 Division Supt. Rob Johnson were present at a number of recent Black Lives Matter protests. She said a particular exchange with a young Black man stuck with her.
“One gentleman who said, ‘You know, I’m 23 years old. This is my brother, he’s 15. I worry every day if he’s going to die. He worries every day if I’m going to die,'” Clarke recalled.
“This is here in Canada, this is the city of Toronto, and those are his words. It may not be necessarily by the hands of the police, but it’s a worry that he’s had. I could feel that and I know the officers around me could feel that.”
As protestors chanted “Black lives matter,” “no justice, no peace,” and “defund the police,” Clarke said she heard their cries but was not at all offended.
“I’m a Black female police officer and I recognize that the statements that were being made were statements at my uniform and the system and some of the systemic racism that exists, and so I understand that it’s important to know that I share the same pain as the demonstrators,” she said.
“But I also know the goodness of the men and women in this organization and what they are trying to do. It’s very important that in my position that I’m able to show both sides.
“The demonstration is important because you can feel the pain but believe me when I say that there are members within the organization that are feeling pain too.”
That sentiment was echoed by Johnson.
“The vast majority of police officers come to work, they join this profession because they want to make a difference, and when you see the atrocities like we saw in Minneapolis everybody is struggling with how can that happen? How can those other three officers just stand there and let this go on for that extended period of time?” he said.
“We have made incremental steps towards connecting with our communities and in nine minutes all that’s been set back a decade.”
There have been growing calls to defund the police but Clarke said she does not feel that is the solution.
“Historically, there have been many, many communities who have said, ‘We don’t need the police, We’ll police ourselves, we’ll regulate ourselves’ and then we’ve also seen historically where communities have said ‘need the police to keep us safe,'” she said.
“There is almost a definite role for law enforcement in our country but what I would say is that we can do better.
“We need to make our communities feel like they are part of a process and the systems. The systems that we currently have are not systems that ensure that everyone will be treated fairly and equally.”
Clarke said she welcomes the idea of body cameras for police officers.
“Wearing the body cameras at this particular time allows for that transparency. It also allows for accountability because then we have an opportunity to see what has happened. We can tell the story too,” she said.
“So I do believe that being able to wear body cameras will assist us in that particular effort to be able to be transparent to our communities and to be able to truly serve the community.”
In her unique role, Clarke mentors young Black men and women who once aspired to join the service but are now feeling conflicted. She said she has a message for them.
“You have an opportunity. You have an opportunity to be Black. You have an opportunity to be a police officer and show that my uniform, in fact, does not make me a criminal — no different than my skin does not make me a criminal,” she said.
Clarke said she is both hopeful and optimistic that police officers “can do better” but they can’t do it alone. She encouraged everyone to take part in affecting change.
“If there was ever a moment in time for us to recommit ourselves and to truly just dismantle some of these systems to show that we really care, and not just by words, but by action I think we have an opportunity,” Clarke said.
“We have a moment to seize it. People have had enough. We’ve had enough.”
The way to do that she said is “to be the person that removes the knee off of George Floyd’s neck.”
“You need to be that person to remove that knee,” Clarke said.
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