Deputy Police Chief Peter Sloly said previously that hundreds of police jobs could be trimmed if the service used technology better and adopted other cost-saving measures.Chris Young/The Globe and Mail
The Toronto deputy police chief who sparked a furor last week with comments about police reform says he was not disciplined, and his absence from work was unrelated.
"Last week, my furnace blew up and my roof was leaking, and so I had to take some days to get my house sorted out," the controversial Deputy Chief Peter Sloly told the media on Wednesday.
Last week, Chief Mark Saunders and Toronto Police Service spokesman Mark Pugash said they were not sure why or when Deputy Chief Sloly had taken leave or when he would be back.
When asked if his knuckles had been "rapped," Deputy Chief Sloly said his knuckles "seem pretty darn good."
He said he was surprised people were so surprised by his comments. The previous week, in a talk to a small group of young entrepreneurs at an event organized by a MaRS Discovery District program, Deputy Chief Sloly had said previously that hundreds of police jobs could be trimmed if the service used technology better and adopted other cost-saving measures.
The comments drew criticism and official complaints from the police union, the president of which said Deputy Chief Sloly had painted a picture of an "inept" force that was doing nothing to cut costs.
But Mayor John Tory and Councillor Shelley Carroll, both members of Toronto's police oversight board, said the ideas were nothing new.
"The things that I was talking about are the things that the mayor's been talking about, that councillors have been talking about, that our chief and our command have been talking about, that I've been talking about personally for over a decade," Deputy Chief Sloly said on Wednesday.
"I received great support from the people across the city, from my own board members and from my command members, and from service members across the city and from my network right around the world."