Hot Docs is screening a 2005 documentary about the Toronto police that’s eerily relevant today
As filmmaker Min Sook Lee puts it, “The problem has never been just a few bad apples”
Toronto filmmaker Min Sook Lee’s award-winning 2005 documentary Hogtown: The Politics of Policing gets screened every few years—usually in lockstep with fresh news about the Toronto police. The film is about the Toronto Police Services Board (the force’s civilian governance board) and a series of scandals and controversies that surrounded the Toronto Police Service in 2004. It’s playing again at Hot Docs this week, right on schedule.
In the wake of Project South, a string of arrests of Toronto officers this year and an upcoming mayoral election, Hogtown feels strangely prescient as the city reckons with whether it’s possible to truly hold its police force accountable. But, to Lee, the film’s relevance isn’t surprising. “The problem has never been just a few bad apples,” she says. “The culture of militarism is inherently toxic. Corruption and impunity will reproduce itself ad nauseam until leadership becomes honest—and hard-headed—about addressing systemic rot.” In other words, it’s unlikely that her film will fall out of circulation any time soon.
When Lee set out to make the documentary more than 20 years ago, she says, municipal news felt like small potatoes to many Toronontians. But Lee saw the inverse: city hall was where the decisions that shaped people’s daily lives actually got made. She parked herself and her camera in council chambers and watched the daily grind of local governance for months.
She ended up witnessing a three-way battle between the TPSB, a cash-strapped city hall and pro-police advocates. At that time, the police were capitalizing on a crime wave to push for a budget increase, and the civilian governance board was struggling to wrangle the ballooning budget while enduring smear campaigns and internal conflicts. It was an explosive moment in Toronto politics, and the doc exposed how hard it is to police the police. Lee says not much has changed in the 20-odd years since: politicians still fear tabling reforms that could make them seem soft on crime, and the police force gobbles up an ever-larger slice of the city’s budget.
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Clearly, there are still some lessons to be learned from Hogtown. Lee hopes viewers will leave the screening asking questions about the city’s approach to policing and where else some of the force’s $1.43-billion budget could go. “Defunding the police means funding education, community services and libraries,” says Lee.
Hogtown will be screening on Sunday, May 31, at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs Cinema as part of the Stories We Told series. The event will include a post-screening discussion between Lee and Massey College senior fellow and former TPSB chair Alok Mukherjee, moderated by Toronto-based organizer Aliya Pabani.
Lindsey King is a Toronto-based writer and editor whose work can be found in Toronto Life, Maclean’s, Canada’s 100 Best and more. She is interested in arts and culture, food and drink, architecture, design, and real estate stories
