Suspicion - Colour Blinded

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

In this bonus episode, we hear a top cop’s story of being Black and on the job in one of Canada’s biggest police forces.  Listen to Keith Merith’s conversation with Kevin Donovan, providing a back story for our Murder on Mount Olive investigation.

Suspicion, season four, is brought to you by Havelock Metal, quality metal roofing and siding. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is season four of Suspicion, Murder on Mount Olive. To help you understand more about the case of Chris Sheriff, we're doing a number of bonus episodes expanding themes in the series. Today, Color Blinded, my conversation with Keith Merrith, a veteran police officer who

has authored A Darker Shade of Blue, his memoir on race and policing. I had the pleasure of meeting Keith during a panel session on the justice system and our diverse communities. His experiences as a young black man and then a senior police officer were, well, jaw-dropping for me. Keith, I wonder if we could start today by telling me about that experience you had as a 16-year-old, the one that propelled you to be a cop.

Good morning, Kevin. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm glad you invited me to give some insight, my insight into the world of policing. Well, it's interesting how one incident can change the direction of your life, the trajectory. And this incident actually did for me. As the story goes, I was 16 years of age. I just received my driver's license and I thought, okay, I'd like to do something kind of neat. I asked my girlfriend what she wants to do for that day

and she decided let's go down to the Canadian National Exhibition, which we did. And I remember it was a beautiful day, sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky, it was wonderful. And she remember it was a beautiful day, sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky, it was wonderful. And she even let me drive her car, which I thought was brilliant. What kind of car? You know, it was an old Chevy Nova, green. It was a bit clunky, but it worked. And she let me drive. So I drove down to the Canadian National Exhibition and I was in the parking lot. It was very,

very busy at the time. And as I went down one of the aisles, very slowly, there was a police cruiser coming in the opposite direction and we both made eye contact with each other. And obviously it just didn't come across the right way. I felt something off and sure enough, the lights went on. The officer pulled me over. And he walks up to the vehicle. I'm very nervous.

I'm 16 years of age. He demands my driver's license, ownership, and insurance, which I had. And I handed it to him. And then the questioning started. What's your name? Where are you coming from? Whose car is this? And it just progressed worse

and worse to the point where this individual was berating me. He was insulting me. He was degrading me. And he was so upset. And I'm thinking, why are you yelling at me? Why are you screaming at me? Why are you so upset?" And he finally finished off with, "'Nice place this Canada, eh?' That, to me, denoted a racist comment. He was so upset, he just threw my papers back into my lap and walked away. Now, I'm a young man, I'm a black man, and I had done nothing wrong. And this police officer was a white police officer that was imbued with the power and authority vested in him through the provincial government and the Toronto police. I had no authority. He had all the authority and he abused it.

He abused me. And the end result, what I realized at that point was that he did not like what he saw in the car. A young black man with a young white woman. And that pissed him off. And he abused his position. Now I was so broken up about the incident that I did not know how to handle it. I'm young.

I just didn't know where to go with this. But ultimately, I realized that I never wanted to be in that position again. I needed to change what I thought was a system of abuse by the Toronto police. And I made up my mind that day that I would join a police service and I would start to work from the inside out and provide a level of policing that I was not getting from this individual

and other police officers. And that's what happened. That's why I became a police officer. What do you think was going through that officer's mind? You know, the interesting part about all of this is that I believe that he was not born here either. He had a very thick Irish accent. And that denotes to me that you came from somewhere else.

But his whiteness gave him the power and authority. He'd already judged me as a young black boy that he didn't like. And he didn't like what he saw in that vehicle at that time. And he had the power and authority to do something about it, and he did. Keith, it's not like you just turned 18 after that and signed up and started wearing a badge.

It took you, I think, a number of years before you became a police officer. Tell us a little bit about that journey. Yeah, it was an awful journey. The end result was it took me six years and 13 police departments before I was finally hired by the York Regional Police. It was a terrible journey. You know, I would put in my applications.

The applications would disappear, some of them. Some of them I would get a call back and when the officers, the recruiters saw me, I knew that was the end of the road. I would not get a call back. Some of them I went through and I wrote the test and passed the test, got an interview and at the interview stage, I was not selected. They never told you why. But you have a sense of fair play. And for the applications that I put in, I thought I was a good candidate. I believed I was. I had the requisite credentials to be a good officer.

But it never came about. And it took me six years. But I wasn't going to let them determine my future. And I was persistent and eventually was hired. Keith, you're working undercover for the York Regional Police. And undercover in this case means that you're in a nice car and you're going to meet people and to set up drug deals. First of all, am I right about that?

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Is that kind of fun, doing that kind of work? You know, I was a young man and if you asked me to do it today, I wouldn't. But back then, yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was very scary at times, but, you know, satisfying too. And you got a fake name, fake documents, all that, all authorized by the police, and you're working with the squad. And so one day something happens to you when you're driving. Yeah, so I went downtown to set up a drug deal in the city of Toronto, actually.

At that time, I was a young man with designs in my hair, earrings, and the department gave me this car, it's a Mustang 5 liter, a bad-ass machine. This thing was just crisp as can be. After I set up the drug deal, I'm on my way back to the station, back to my area of responsibility. And a police car comes up beside me and the officer looks into the car and sees me and drops back, lights me up, pulls me over. And he says to me that, oh, you know, we had a robbery in the area and, you know, young

black man, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Some bullshit. That's what he gave me. I knew it was bullshit. So I gave him my fake stuff. I didn't give him my right stuff because I want to see the reaction. What's going on here? And he comes back to the car and he says,

okay, looks like you're clean. The car was clean. And he lets me go. So I continue on my way and watching my speed limit and the lines and everything else. And the light comes on again. Now I did not see this other car, this other cruiser. I didn't see it at all.

It just appeared. I get pulled over again. Now this is probably, I'm going to suggest to you, 10 minutes after that last stop. And the officer tells me that I'm weaving on the lines and all this bullshit, right? I wasn't. I gave him my papers, he checked me out,

and he let me go. As I got up the road and I crossed over into York Region, a York Regional Police Officer came behind the vehicle and tracked me for three, four, five minutes and then pulled me over a third time. And he said to me that me over a third time. And he said to me that he's just checking vehicles in the area. So what do we really have here? We have a young black man, we have a five liter Mustang, badass as I said, and we had the Highway Traffic Act. So the police officers were using that tool to pull me over for no reason other than to investigate

me. And what's the common denominator? My mahogany hue and that bad ass car. So I say to you, how many people can tell you that they've been stopped within 40 minutes by three different officers while driving properly. And when you get back to the station, do you tell colleagues? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I'm talking. Yeah, I'm talking. Definitely calling it out. You know, and sometimes you be a little playful with it. Sometimes you're a little bit strategic

with it because I wanted the officers to it, sometimes you're a little bit strategic with it because I wanted the officers to know, and they're white officers, I wanted to know this is what's happening to me. We'll be right back. I grew up in the renovation business. If I wasn't a reporter, I would have been a builder. And I know quality is key. So whether it's for your house, cottage or building, make your next roof last with Havelock Metal. Havelock Metal has been specializing in steel roofing, siding, trim and accessories for over 30 years. Visit HaveLuckMetal.com to request your quote today.

Now our series, Murder on Mount Olive, it's exploring the case of a young black man who was serving life in prison for a murder he says he didn't commit. Chris Sheriff was 19 when this happened. He's told me stories, many stories, of police stopping him on the way home from soccer practice, from school, even one time driving in the car with his dad. This practice, which at least in Toronto, we called carding, was there ever a good reason for it,

ever a good reason to stop a person? In my experience, the carding initially was an investigative tool. And the way it worked was, and I'll give you an example of what the intention behind carding was. If you are a patrol officer and you're doing checks on buildings, let's say. You go behind a store that has been closed for the past few hours, and it's an audio-visual store, stereo equipment, high-end, so on and so forth. And you come across a vehicle in the back of that store with two individuals in that vehicle.

What are they doing there? You go and check them out. They do not have a valid reason for being there. They're suspicious. At that point, you would take their information and then information would be entered into a police system. The reason for that is if in the future there are break and enters in that area having to do with stereo equipment and audiovisual equipment and so on and so forth, you have a starting

point. These individuals were acting in a suspicious manner in around the area. So it's an investigative tool. But what happened to that investigative tool was abuse by the police. It turned into something quite different. What was happening primarily in Toronto where the officers were investigating young black men primarily with no cause, no just cause.

A group of young men would be playing basketball, soccer, whatever, and the police would go over, ask them information and document it and put it into a system. Now they are carted. The ramifications of that are treacherous. I'll give you an example of why. I had an opportunity to run a unit, a recruiting unit,

and a number of these situations came up where a young black man would put in an application, primarily young black men, and they were rejected because they were carded. They come in with their application and there's absolutely no indication of criminal activity whatsoever. And university degrees and volunteer work and so on and so forth. But this carding would pop up. And I had a number of cases where I did a little bit of background investigation

into the carding situation. And every one of them came back to me as guilt by association, meaning that they were playing basketball, soccer, driving in a car, whatever. The car was investigated, they were investigated and connected to other individuals that perhaps did have a criminal background. But now they are associated with that individual and the carding followed them and was detrimental to them, especially when they were looking for a job in law enforcement or in the criminal investigative

world. Keith, so I'm white. In 45 years of driving, I've been pulled over a few times for speeding. I don't think you ever pulled me over, and I deserve to be pulled over, but I've never been pulled over because of my race. You have a unique perspective on this. Can we talk a little bit about the effect on a young man who has stopped on the street multiple times for no reason? How does it affect what they think about the justice system and police?

Well, I'm sure you've heard of the terminology, driving while black. It's a real thing. Many of the young people that I talk to, many of my friends and family have been subjected to that, driving while black. I myself have been subjected to it. So think of this. You are driving your vehicle and you are complying with all the rules and regulations of the Highway Traffic Act.

You're not doing anything wrong. You're just going to and from wherever. Police officer pulls up beside you, has a good look at you, and next thing you know, the lights go on and they pull you over. In your mind, you've done nothing wrong. But you know as a black man, primarily, that this is going to happen to you. And the reason is because of your skin color. And sure enough, it does happen. So the thought process is, you're not for me. You're not serving me. You're against me. And how can I trust you? How can we be as a community working together when you abuse me? And that's the thought process that goes

through a lot of young men when these things happen. And they expect it because it happens all the time. So there's that distrust in the police. There's that fear that all they want to do is to find something on me and lock me up. And that's the thought process that a lot of men and women, primarily black, have with the police. They distrust them because the police are not working for them. Keith, in your book, A Darker Shade of Blue, you tell a story, I mean, we think of this

driving while black as something that happens or walking while black to a young person, but I believe that you were a fairly senior police officer and were pulled over at one point coming back from the airport. Interesting story. My eldest daughter went to school in the United States, and one summer she was coming back and I picked her up at the airport. I'm driving back to where I live and I'm in a line of cars. Now the speed limit is 120, we're doing about 125, 130, the line of cars in the fast lane. Okay, I glance back in the rear view mirror and I see

a number of cars pull out, so they're gone into the middle lane. But this happened quite a few times when I was looking back through the rear view mirror, and then I realized why. Right behind me now is a police cruiser, and the police cruiser is right up on my bumper. I saw no reason to move over. The cars in front of me were doing just slightly above the speed limit, and I was just in line in succession. So I just stayed where I was. The police cruiser pulled up beside me, took a very good look at who was in the car, and then dropped back and lit me up, put the lights on,

little burp on the siren, and pulled me over. This officer came out of her vehicle, the police vehicle, and walked up to my car. And with a rude and really unprofessional attitude demanded my papers. And then she said to me, did you not see the police cruiser? And I said, yes, I did. Well, when you see the police cruiser, you must move over. And I said, why? I told you that's what you need to do. And then she took my papers and walked away. Now, my daughter was in complete shock at the behavior of this officer. And she says to me, daddy, why don't you tell her you're a police officer?

And I said, no, I want to see how this is going to play out. What's your rank at this time? I'm a staff sergeant, actually, at this point in time. On a day off, the officer came back and she blasted me again and threw my papers in my lap. Now, there's another side to this story is that I knew who this officer was. It was a York Regional Police officer who was on the 401 out of her jurisdiction. And I knew this. I never said a word. In fact, this young lady worked in the same division

I worked at. And surprisingly enough, I had booked one of her prisoners about a week or week and a half or so ago in the station. She did not recognize me out of uniform. Didn't even recognize the name. So I drove my daughter home. I did an immediate turnaround and I went to the police station and I spoke to the staff sergeant in charge of the station who I knew very well because he was my partner.

So I asked him to call this young lady off the road, and I sat in his chair, the staff sergeant's chair, in the same clothes that I had on, and she walks into the office, and she almost fell on her face. She was that shocked. Immediately, she recognized or realized what she had done. And that was my opportunity to set the record straight, so to speak.

You know, I gave her the lecture and I wrote her up. I gave her a reprimand and told her that she has not represented the organization well. And if you can treat me that way, I can't even imagine how you treat other people on the road. What happened to that officer? You know, she was admonished. And for a little while, I think she kept the right pace. She did the right things. But ultimately, she was involved in an accident on the road in

the cruiser and she was seriously injured and never came back to work again. I'm sitting here and I'm thinking how horrible that situation was, but I'm also talking to somebody who worked undercover, did pretty much every job you could do as a police officer, including managing a large number of officers, you must develop a gut feeling. So is there sort of a tension between the gut feeling of the officer saying, I should talk to this person, and the other part saying, no, I don't have a right to talk to this person?

That's an excellent question. When I was a supervisor, I encouraged my officers to be proactive. When you see things and, you know, this feeling is not right, then go investigate. I'm not telling you to breach any rules and regulations, policies, procedures, or the criminal code. I'm telling you to go and investigate. Use your police skills and knowledge to investigate whatever is going on. Now there's a difference between criminal profiling and racial profiling.

If you are investigating strictly because that individual is of a racial background, you are a thousand percent wrong and nobody can stand up with you on that. You're on your own. But if you profile criminally, and I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about, criminal profiling. Joe Smith is a member of the Hells Angels. I see him in a vehicle with another individual and they're circling the block. Well, okay. But you also know that in that block lives a member of the loaners motorcycle gangs and their archenemies. What's going on? So I know this individual has a propensity for crime.

He's in a gang and he's in an area and I see him circling around a couple of times. That's suspicious behavior. Investigate. But if an individual is in a vehicle and they're black or brown and they're going to the grocery store and they pass you and you see them, you don't like the color of their skin, you're going to the grocery store and they pass you and you see them. You don't like the color of their skin, you're going to pull them over and investigate. Wrong. I mean it's simple as that. We'll be right back. Whether it's for your house, cottage or building,, make your next roof last with Havelock Metal. Havelock Metal has been specializing in steel roofing, siding, trim, and accessories for over 30 years.

Visit HavelockMetal.com to request your quote today. Okay, now let's switch to the topic of training. You worked in a big metropolitan police force. Was it difficult to move up in the ranks? Yeah, it was extremely difficult, extremely difficult. So the premise is this, in an organization when I started, they certainly did not want me as their equal. They didn't see me as equal, and they definitely didn't want me as their boss. So there was always roadblocks. Every step of the way there were roadblocks.

And they were pretty good at it because, you know, at that time, they had free reign. When I say they, I mean, the management had free reign to pretty well do whatever they wanted to do. Now we have a bit more structure. They have to follow the structure a little bit tighter. There's still space within that. I get it. But back then, there was not. They would preclude me from getting courses, which were seen as credits towards advancement. I spent three years in the drug squad and not a single drug course, where people all around me, officers all around me, and in different units were getting the training. I got none of it.

I spent three years in race relations within the organization, and I was denied every course that I put in for race relations. As an instructor, they denied me. When I started to go up the ranks, I'll give you a bigger example of when I was promoted, eventually promoted to the rank of inspector, I would go into some of the senior management meetings and I would be perplexed. What's going on here?

There's an initiative that has been started. Officers have been assigned to this initiative to run it and so on and so forth. I knew nothing about it Obviously they sat around the barbecue or hockey or whatever and decided this is what they're going to do and they did it and Left me out. So I'm sitting at the table. What's going on here? And the reason for that is they didn't want me to build up my portfolio Any more than it already was and some of these officers were in line for the next promotion.

So they would get these initiatives and now they could speak to these initiatives as part of their promotional package. Okay, well you don't seem like what I think used to be called a shrinking violet. How did you deal with this? How did you advance? I decided that I'm not sitting on this anymore.

I'm not getting beat this anymore. I'm not getting beat up anymore. I refuse. But you have to be smart. You have to be strategic in how you challenge them and the system. Otherwise, they will eat you up. They want you to make a misstep. So that's what I did. I looked ahead in the future. All of the hurdles that I could recognize in front of me, I took them down before I even got to them. One of the hurdles was, and I knew it, at the time I joined the police service, I did not have a bachelor's degree. I knew that was a hurdle.

Well, on the job, I went to university, part-time, and eventually got my degree. So I knocked that one down. Things like that, I helped myself. And eventually, they ran out of excuses. They couldn't stop me anymore. Did you find you had allies along the way that were helping you? I did have people in my corner that vouched for me, but so did many other officers. And sometimes their poll was much greater than mine.

They reached further up the chain of command than I would. So I challenged myself. I not only sought allies inside the organization, but also outside with community groups, with other police officers through other services and so on and so forth. I joined an organization, the Association of Black Law Enforcers, and eventually became the president of that organization. It was hairy at the time because forming an organization that says black officers in the title was not something that was cherished, let's put it that way, in the police department.

You know, why do you need a black organization? Well, you know, I did because we needed to fight as a collective body. Otherwise, there would be no movement. There would be no incentive for you to sit across the table from me. Keith, what year did you start as an officer? 1986. 1986.

So today, if a young officer joins the force, do you feel that they are trained better than they were in 1986 to understand that we are in a diverse community and you can't just pull people over or stop them for no good reason? The diversity count within many organizations has risen significantly. And that's on purpose. It's by design because the organizations realize that they need to be reflective of the community.

But what you still have is the senior command majority of male whites. So even though you are bringing in diverse officers at the onset. You still have senior management with the idea that they still want to keep on a hang on to that power. The young officers now are much more enlightened, I would say, in terms of working in a diverse field. They've grown up with diversity in their schools and at home and so on and so forth, much more than we did back in the day. I mean, going back, you know, in the 70s and 60s and 50s and so on. And they fare much better. They do.

But all you need is one individual to contaminate the next individual, and then it just steamrolls from there, and they put the police department in a regression and that happens. We are in a very racially diverse country. What's the path forward? I think you've just said that it's getting a bit better. Yes.

How do we make it a lot better? You mentioned allies and I think that's incredibly important that the diverse communities reach out and find, seek out allies. The allies come in many different forms and at different levels. We need to seek out the allies that have the power and authority to make and implement changes. And when these allies come on board, we have to work hand-in-hand with them to ensure that the movement forward is the correct movement. It's not just a band-aid solution. It has to be foundational and concrete and sustainable. I think it's important that history is taught.

I think because when you explain history, it gives context to what we are saying now. And it's insightful. It opens up people's hearts and minds and moves towards change. What do you mean by history being taught? Well, in my book, there are sections where I talk about historical incidents that happened to people of color perpetrated by police. When you read those incidences, they're shocking, but they're true.

If we have those incidences as a marker, then you can understand why people, some of us, feel the way we feel when we interact with law enforcement. A good example of that, and it's not even that far back in history, but it is historical now for a few years, is the George Floyd incident where George Floyd was killed by a number of police officers. That was live and in technicolor for the world to see. Police abuse, where this officer placed his knee on this young black man's neck until he was dead.

That is a story that we've been telling for a long, long time in different variations. But the world got to see it firsthand because of technology. When you go back in history, those stories are repeated over and over again. But it's almost like a detachment because there's no visual attached to it. It's a story that's being told. But when the stories are told in the right way, I believe that people will ingest it and say, okay, I'm starting to understand what you're saying. I'm starting to understand that it is detrimental to be a person of color going up against established

societies, established norms that really are a disadvantage to people like me. And I think once they get it in their heart, they will be more inclined to help, more inclined to make the changes and move society in the direction that we should be going. Marjorie Sheriff, who is the mother of Chris Sheriff, who's the subject of my investigative podcast, she has sons and daughters. And when they were little, she would send them out on the street to play or to go to school or play soccer with a warning.

She would say, don't do anything that's gonna attract the attention of police. Answer their question, basically keep your head down. Today, are mothers and fathers still saying that? Yeah, you know what? You're almost derelict in your duties if you do not warn as a person of color your sons and daughters and aunts and uncles and whoever else to be wary of the police. It's sad to say. Now, I know a little bit more because I've worked with these officers directly and there have been some absolutely fantastic officers. Just unbelievable. And And I could spend all day describing their valor, their candor, their heartfelt belief in what they're doing and doing the right thing.

And I'm talking about white officers, but there are some bad ones out there and I've worked with them. And those bad officers, they need to be gone, like yesterday. And they set the police department back years and years and years. No matter how much good the police service does, just a couple of bad acts by these individuals will set that organization back a number of years. Your book, Darker Shade of Blue, was, as I said, the start and eye opener for me.

It's full of so many stories, personal anecdotes, history, and charts, I think a pretty good way forward. We obviously need more Keith Maris out there. Thanks for coming to speak to us today, and let's keep in touch. Kevin, I very much appreciate you giving me the opportunity to speak today. Murder on Mount Olive was written and narrated by me, Kevin Donovan. It was produced by Angeline Francis and Sean Pattendon.

Our executive producer is JP Fozo. Additional production by Kelsey Wilson, Matt Hearn and Tanya Pereira. Sound and theme music by Sean Paton. If you want to feel more connected to humanity and a little less alone, listen to Beautiful Anonymous. Each week I take a phone call from one random anonymous human being.

There's over 400 episodes in our back catalog. You get to feel connected to all these different people all over the world. Recent episodes include one where a lady survived a murder attempt by her own son. But then the week before that, we just talked about Star Trek. It can be anything.

It's unpredictable, it's raw, it's real. Get Beautiful Anonymous wherever you listen to podcasts.