Recently I was notified of this article in Maclean’s from January 9th, 1989 entitled “Patrolling the Night”. The entire article, with a copy of the original print (so cool!) can be found here. Maclean’s senior writer at the time, Ric Dolphin, spent a Saturday night shift with police officers from Toronto’s 51 Division. At the time, Toronto Police was known as Metropolitan Toronto Police or simply Metro, so some of the article refers to that.
It wasn’t until 1998 that the name change occurred after the creation of the amalgamated City of Toronto. Younger folks might even find it stranger to learn that the cruisers of this time were yellow rather than the current grey and white color scheme they have! This was a very different time for policing in Canada, especially one of the busiest cities in Toronto, not just with Toronto’s name but how police responded to calls, their equipment and even how they hired.
Dolphin reports Staff Sergeant Fernandes who at that time commanded 51 Division. He is quickly exposed to a prisoner who is being brought into cells, a male who just stabbed his brother. It’s almost 11pm so a shift change is occurring, and Fernandes is relieved by an acting Staff Sergeant, Gregory McLane. Dolphin is assigned to two partner officers, Constable Bruce Kane who is 6’2, 225 pounds and Constable Joan Pagnotta who is 5’4 and weighs 110 pounds. The pair tell Dolphin about some of the administrative details of the job, such as how a first class (highest rank for a constable) takes home $41,000 a year. This is compared to $105,000 a year today.
The two officers usher him into their cruiser, a Plymouth Caravelle that is a head of it’s time for the years by being equipped with spotlights, a radio and a communications computer. At the time, only a few cruisers had the computer and it operated something similar to a DoS based system spitting out line by line details with white text and a black background, there was no fancy interface like there is today.
Dolphin attends with the officers on several calls, including a robbery investigation. The two officers learn that a suspect might be one known to them as a male with a scar, they quickly get the victim in and do a photo line up showing him 12 mug shuts of males with scars matching other descriptors. The victim identifies the male positively as the suspect they had in mind, and Cst. Pagnotta types out her report on a typewriter. What time. It’s quite the read, and it highlights some of the problems that police were dealing with back then which aren’t too different from today. For example, they dealt with a crack pandemic compared to the meth and fentanyl issues police deal with today. Check it out here.
Smooth