In most jobs, Clarke would be canned

Supt. (erat) Stacy Clarke did the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.

- ROSIE DIMANNO

Whatever her motives for helping her junior colleagues cheat on their promotional exams, former Toronto police superintendent Stacy Clarke acted with corrupt intent, Rosie DiManno writes.

Because the half-dozen Black officers she mentored for promotion — in a cheating scandal that brought Toronto police into considerable disrepute — didn’t actually need a scamming boost. Each had the support of their respective superintendents and staff sergeants. Each already had high scores in the highly competitive promotion process. Getting a gander at the confidential interview questions, which Clarke had texted for their advance knowledge, was unnecessary as she “baited” them into her scheme.

Because the “very serious misconduct” in which Clarke engaged occurred a mere 10 months after she herself had been promoted to the rank of superintendent — becoming the first Black female superintendent in the force’s history, an achievement she’d well-earned, on merit.

Because her rationale for the deception — helping racialized officers advance in the face of documented systemic racism, obstacles cultural and organizational, an inequitable ceiling that had broken her spirit, even as she overcame them — was furnished as a pretext only after she’d been caught. And her initial reaction was to cover it up, by urging one of her mentees to erase evidence of the misconduct.

But perhaps most trenchantly because, in the clarion words of tribunal adjudicator Robin McElaryDowner, “there is no room in policing for noble cause corruption.”

That is a principle we should all heed, from cops to journalists. The duplicitous shortcut renders the outcome ignoble.