The message was painted in large pink lettering that nearly spans the width of the street Friday morning.
Protesters outside of police headquarters also chanted for the defunding of police.
College Street has been completely closed from Yonge Street to Bay Street to accommodate the protest.
The protest comes as Black people in the U.S. and around the world mark the Juneteenth holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. The holiday marks the date in 1855 when slaves in Texas were told that they were free, some 30 months after the Emancipation Proclamation.
While that milestone in the end of slavery came 155 years ago, recent police killings of Black people have brought to light the glaring inequalities and societal racism that remain.
Governments and corporations have been rallying to recognize anti-Black racism as a systemic problem in society since an outpouring of anger over the video-recorded police killing of George Floyd on May 25 in
One of the rallying cries from protesters has been a call to defund police services. While some have advocated doing away with the current policing model altogether, others have suggested that some of the funds allocated to traditional policing could be better spent on mental health services and social programs that might stem some of the problems that police deal with.Minneapolis, Minn. sparked global protests.
In Toronto the annual police budget of around $1 billion usually comes in as the single largest line item in the City of Toronto’s overall budget.
The GTA has seen numerous protests, nearly all peaceful, over the past few weeks.
Chief Mark Saunders notably took a knee with protesters in one of the early marches.
Saunders, who has announced that he will be stepping down from his post at the end of July, has said that funds should not be diverted from TPS unless there is reliable infrastructure to deal with the issues that might be offloaded from police.
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