Hank Idsinga’s book about his experiences as a Toronto murder investigator was hard to put down. Idsinga led Toronto’s homicide unit for five years after being a homicide detective. His team cracked the Bruce McArthur serial killer case. Under his supervision some big, cold cases were solved.
His memoir is fascinating. I love the nuts and bolts of how an investigation comes together to reach a conclusion, hopefully, with charges against the guilty.
Investigating murders and other major crimes is far less glamorous than TV makes it seem. In one case, detectives had to painstakingly put together 60 km worth of CCTV and private security video footage to prove a suspect was at a scene. Sixty kilometres! You know how short a camera’s range is. That kind of evidence gathering requires infinite patience and organizational skills.
Policing is About People
Idsinga writes about suspect interrogations, keeping in touch with victims’ families, victims who won’t talk and suspects who won’t shut up. Those who know him describe Idsinga as dependable and smart. He didn’t lose his temper and he dealt with conflict calmly and head on. The book reflects that. He doesn’t go off on tangents about murderers who went free or lost chances to gather evidence. He focused on the cases he could close and the evidence he could find.
The Bruce McArthur case was particularly interesting (and disgusting) to review. McArthur killed eight men from Toronto’s gay village and hid many of their remains on the properties of his clients. (He was a landscaper.) It took time to nail him but when they did, the evidence was so overwhelming that McArthur had no choice but to plead guilty. That piece of human garbage is 74 now and in jail for the rest of his life.
Another chapter that fascinated me was about gang-style activity and murders. Texting between gang members became evidence and even though it was English, there’s no way you or I could understand it. They used partial words, slang for all sorts of things from guns to stolen goods, and the gibberish was so weird that it had to be treated like a foreign language. They called in an expert in gang communication to make sense of it. I’ve never read anything like it.
Bad Apples
The most explosive part of Idsinga’s book (for the public) was about his experiences with anti-semitism. Idsinga is Jewish and he witnessed anti-Jewish rants and saw bias from senior police officers first-hand. In the book he suggests that someone calling Toronto police can’t be sure whether their call will be answered by a biased officer. (The police union wasn’t happy.)
Antisemitism is at an all-time high in Toronto. Someone has shot up synagogues. People have been attacked while minding their own business. The Prime Minister has created a new National Advisory Council to deal with this crisis.
There’s always a slight chance that a sexist officer might show up to a woman’s call. Or a racist one to an immigrant’s call. Cops are just people and those people, awful as they are, are out there. So, if antisemitism is happening more in society it stands to reason it could be a bigger problem on the police force, too. (I wish someone could explain to me why antisemitism even exists. I’ve tried to understand it all my life. Maybe I never will.)
The Cop Culture
I always suspected some police get pretty full of themselves when they move up in the ranks and Idsinga confirmed that it’s true. He isn’t just gossiping. He’s explaining why the inner workings aren’t as efficient as they could be because some supervisors think they’re above doing their damn job. You want to talk inefficiency? The police force had licenses for Microsoft Teams that were never used. Idsinga got IT going on it and suddenly they had a way to quickly communicate.
Idsinga also highlights the unfairness of how some police members get promoted ahead of others more deserving. Racism. Favouritism. The police union took issue with that as well. But Idsinga’s experiences are his to tell. The problems in the force make up only a small part of an excellent book by a respected police retiree. There are some graphic passages about murders you might remember, but they also account for just a fraction of the writing. The High Road is an excellent, illuminating read.