Toronto Police Chief Gets a "Champion of Diversity" Award

From the Toronto Star:

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair is being honoured as a “champion for diversity.”

The award, to be presented Friday by the Diversity Business Network, honours Blair for his success in the implementation of diversity strategies. Blair is credited with promoting diversity in the workplace and for his commitment to building positive relationships with the diverse communities across the city, the business group says.

“Chief Blair has set a benchmark for diversity achievement as Chief of Police of Toronto,” says Courtney Betty, president and founder of DBN in a news release. “The service and commitment infused within the Toronto Police Services in cultural diversity and representation reflects Blair’s overall contribution in building a police force that will grow with this world-class city.”

Blair was appointed chief in April 2005. The force employs more than 5,500 police officers and 2,200 civilian employees, the largest municipal police service in Canada and one of the largest in North America.

The Canadian Diversity Leadership Award will be awarded Friday at the Canadian Supplier Diversity Conference at the Allstream Centre at Exhibition Place.

Has anyone else noticed that the more "diverse" we get—and the more we celebrate "diversity"—the more ineffectual our police services get? I'm not sure whether that's a deliberate or an unintended consequence of the "diversity" scam.

Oddly enough, in last week's Star, Chief Blair got into a bit of a dust up with a chap who accused his officers of harbouring un-"diverse"-like tendencies; the accuser ever hauled out Hannah Arendt's old "banality of evil" idea in criticizing police dealings with black males. To which the Chief, mega-affronted, replied:

Criminal lawyer Reid Rusonik’s article is, sadly, not the first time in recent memory that the Star has allowed its pages to be used to make “Nazi” references to the Toronto Police Service.

The only explanation for Mr. Rusonik using Hannah Arendt’s 1963 phrase, the “banality of evil,” written in the aftermath of the Adolf Eichmann trial, is to replace reasoned argument with the most offensive, completely misguided and appallingly insensitive historical comparison.

It’s a tactic most often used by the intellectually lazy or inarticulate, who lack the skills to compile a rational, persuasive argument.

For the Star to allow its pages to be soiled by such grotesque language, once again, is inexcusable.

I agree that the Arendt reference is not apropos, not the least because it was full of crap to begin with.