TORONTO — The first time Donovan Locke had to perform an intervention with an aspiring extremist, the 14-year-old in question had been caught spouting white supremacist views at a Toronto high school.
The parents were notified, along with the Toronto Police Service, where Locke is an acting staff sergeant and a coordinator of a new project attempting to address radicalization in Canada’s largest city.
Before he left to have a chat with the student, there was a debate about whether Locke was the right choice for the intervention — the teen had apparently embraced racism, and Locke was born in the Caribbean.
But he went anyway, and got the race issue out of the way at the outset, telling the youth, “You may not like me but this is how I was born.” Said Locke: “I wanted to give him a different perspective.”
THE CANADIAN PRESS/John WoodsAaron Driver leaves the Law Courts in Winnipeg, Tuesday, February 2, 2016.
Like governments around the world, Canada has been puzzling over how to combat violent extremism. Radicalization and recruitment by Islamist extremists and the racist far right have exposed the lack of a clear counter-strategy.
After police shot ISIL supporter Aaron Driver while leaving his home in Strathroy, Ont. on Aug. 10 to conduct a suicide bombing, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said there was “little national coherence” to counter-readicalization efforts in Canada and re-committed the government to opening an office to coordinate them nationally.
The National Post has learned that for the past two years, Toronto has been quietly experimenting with its own approach. Launched as a pilot project by the Toronto police and City of Toronto, it has been kept under wraps until now.
But in interviews with the Post, key officials spoke for the first time about what they have been doing. “One of the things we chose to do here was not to engage the media,” said James Ramer, Toronto’s deputy police chief. But, he said, “We’re at the point now that we do want to advertise it.”
There is little consensus about what to do about violent radicalization, which has come to prominence as Canadians have joined groups like ISIL. Others have been convicted of terror plots, arrested on peace bonds, stopped from leaving to join terrorist groups or have returned home with terrorist training.
Jack Boland / Toronto Sun / QMI AgencyJames Ramer speaks at Police HQ.
Toronto has stepped cautiously into the fight. Rather than creating a stand-alone radicalization prevention program like in Calgary and Montreal, the city opted instead to incorporate counter-extremism into its existing community safety program.
In February 2014, the RCMP came up with a proposed plan that, according to a document obtained under the Access to Information Act, involved seizing passports, putting names on the no-fly list and arrests. But it also called for “community-based activities aimed at preventing individuals from embracing violent ideologies.”
That same month, Ramer asked Locke and Det. Sgt. Kelly Gallant, who had just returned from mentoring female police officers in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, to look into what Toronto could do.
Although Toronto had avoided a major attack, it had been the target of several failed plots by al-Qaida supporters. Toronto residents had been recruited into al-Qaida, Al Shabab, Hezbollah, the Tamil Tigers and the Ku Klux Klan, among others.
“It’s an issue that our citizens, our communities, are concerned about and that we recognize is out there,” said Gallant, a 30-year police veteran who has served as a firearms instructor, tactical team member and negotiator.
AP Photo/Mike StewartIn this Saturday, April 23, 2016 photo, members of the Ku Klux Klan participate in cross and swastika burnings after a "white pride" rally in rural Paulding County near Cedar Town, Ga
In July 2014, four Toronto-area men in their twenties crossed into Syria to join ISIL, giving new urgency to Ramer’s assignment. The deadly attacks in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa three months later brought national focus to the dangers of extremism.
The Toronto police team began by studying what others had done. They sat through conferences in the United States and consulted academics. They read books and research papers. They visited programs in places like the United Kingdom.
They came back believing that those who radicalized often seemed to have other challenges in their lives. They were struggling with mental health, identity or family — things that had left them vulnerable to extremist messaging. It was not unlike what police saw in the backgrounds of gang members.
Toronto had already been working to address gangs and drugs. Focus Rexdale was formed in the city’s northwest in 2012 to reduce crime and improve community safety. It was based on a model created in Prince Albert, Sask., which itself got the idea from Glasgow, Scotland.
Ottawa CitizenA tourist shot this photo of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau during his attack near Parliament Hill.
The idea was to identify people at risk and to intervene. Cases were brought to weekly “situation tables” headed by the police, the city and the United Way. Community service agencies sat at the table as well. Together, they looked at each case and tried to come up with strategies that might involve treating addiction, getting into social housing, education, employment and a long list of other issues.
There are now community safety hubs across the city and dozens more across Canada, but Toronto is believed to be the first city to add violent extremism to the mix of issues they deal with. Given the relatively modest scale of the problem compared to other social ills, police reasoned, why create a new program solely for extremism when the city already had the hub infrastructure in place?
There were also concerns that if Toronto created a program specifically for extremism, people might not come forward because of the stigma it would create. The neighbourhood in which such a program was located might be unfairly branded as having a problem with radicalism. Some worried the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service would park outside to identify targets for investigations.
In June 2015, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders approved the plan to begin referring extremism cases to the Rexdale hub, and on Oct. 31 a steering committee agreed to expand the pilot project to hubs in the city’s northwest, northeast, southwest and southeast.
At the heart of it, it’s about connecting people to services to reduce the risks that they face, whether it’s extremism or something else
“It makes perfect sense because we already have these mechanisms that respond to situations of risk,” said Scott McKean, the city of Toronto official overseeing the work. “At the heart of it, it’s about connecting people to services to reduce the risks that they face, whether it’s extremism or something else.”
Cases go through an initial police screening. Those who have crossed the line into actual criminal or terrorist activity are excluded and referred to the RCMP for investigation. “We are not going to send somebody like that to the hub,” Deputy Ramer said.
The Toronto project is not meant for committed extremists, said Sara Thompson, an associate professor at Ryerson University’s Department of Criminology and the project’s academic advisor. Rather it’s for the “misfits,” “wannabes” and “hangers on” at the periphery of extremism — but, she said, that group makes up a good share of those radicalizing.
“For a certain proportion of people who are moving into that radicalized space I think that what the Toronto Police Service is doing will catch and hopefully help to re-engage those people on a different trajectory.”
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To reassure community members, meanwhile, cases are discussed without names. Ramer called the system “absolutely anonymous.” By the end of this year, those who don’t feel comfortable coming forward to police to report concerns about extremists will be able to tell a teacher or service agency, who can bring the cases to the situation tables.
Gallant said she wanted parents, friends, teachers and anyone else concerned that someone was becoming radicalized to know help was available. “It’s no different than the concern that their child may be starting to get into drugs,” she said. “Maybe they need a mentor to help them navigate what they’re going through.”
“We don’t have all the answers. We’re putting what we think is a good initiative forward. We may have to tweak it along the way or make some changes as we move forward, but I think we’ve done our due diligence.”
“I think it has huge potential,” said Thompson. “Everybody is watching to see what happens.” She said the project should be carefully evaluated because so little is known about what works. “We’re all flying by the seat of our pants right now based on a small number of studies, and growing the knowledge base is so important to getting this right.”
Experts said the Toronto system will likely be effective in some cases but not others. “I don’t think it’s a panacea,” said Stephanie Carvin, an assistant professor who specializes in national security at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.
Postmedia NewsFighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — also known as Daesh — are seen in an undated photo.
Phil Gurski, who was involved in early discussions about the Toronto project when he was at Public Safety Canada, said the advantage of treating radicalization as part of a broader strategy for at-risk youths was that it avoided the stigma associated with terrorism, making it easier to get people behind it.
But he said youths caught up in drugs and gangs didn’t necessarily have the same underlying issues as those attracted to extremism. “So you’re basically treating the two populations as being very similar,” he said. “And it’s not a good fit, at least not in a Canadian setting, for violent radicalization.”
Counter-extremism programs are struggling with questions like how to measure their success, their relationships with police and how to convince parents to come forward while at the same time meeting their responsibility to alert counter-terrorism authorities when someone is a public threat. “This is all a work in progress,” Gurski said. “We’re going to see if it works.”
To date, only a handful of cases have been brought to the program. “Not to the degree that we want,” Locke said. One involved parents concerned about their child’s online consumption of ISIL videos. Underlying mental health issues were identified.
In another, a girl who had been reported missing was found to have crossed the U.S. border at Fort Erie with a plane ticket to Pakistan, where she was to marry a man she had met on social media. She was stopped and returned home.
Tyler Anderson / National PostStaff Sgt. Donovan Locke, poses for a portrait in Toronto, Ontario, Monday, November 14, 2016.
When Locke found himself in the home of a budding white supremacist last year, it was a first for him — but he’d been having similar talks with young people throughout his career. He grew up in Scarborough and served five years with the Niagara police before moving to the Toronto force, where he served on the guns and gangs task force before being appointed crime prevention coordinator at Focus Rexdale.
“I wanted to right off the bat make it positive, have a positive impact on that person,” said Locke.
He did not wear his uniform to the intervention. He assured the teen he wasn’t in trouble, that they weren’t going to arrest him. He said he knew it could be intimidating to get a visit from the police but he wanted them to have an honest talk. “I just wanted to have a conversation with him,” Locke said. “Not a debate, just a conversation.”
Rather than challenging the teen’s beliefs, Locke explained what could happen if he continued down the path he was on. He talked about public safety. “I said to him, number one, I don’t want you getting hurt,” he said. “You could tell it was kind of resonating with him.”
The teen talked about why he felt the way he did. The officer said people were standing by, ready to help. “It was laying out his options. And it was being honest with him,” he said. “A lot of it was listening, as I’ve done with many gang members over the years.”
When they were done, they shook hands and Locke told the youth to call if he wanted to talk again. “The mere fact that he considered it as an option, that was good enough for me.”
It doesn’t always go so smoothly. A York Regional Police officer who paid a visit to the home of an autistic youth who had been seen at “white nationalist” events was unable to convince him to even come out of his room.
But Locke said his intervention with the white supremacist appeared to have worked out as well as could be expected. He said he had heard the youth was doing well, and police haven’t had to deal with him since.
“It’s not perfect,” Locke said, “but it’s something.”
• Email: sbell@nationalpost.com | Twitter: @StewartBellNP