Amrik Singh Ahluwalia is the new chair of the Peel Police Services Board and will now lead the oversight body for the country’s third-largest municipal police force. ‘What a wonderful country we live in,’ said Ahluwalia, the board’s unanimous choice.
TORONTO – Amrik Singh Ahluwalia is the new chair of the Peel Police Services Board and will now lead the oversight body for the country’s third-largest municipal police force.
“My first thoughts are, what a wonderful country we live in,” he said, after immediately taking the chair’s seat following Friday morning’s unanimous vote, reported Toronto Star newspaper.
Ahluwalia briefly described arriving in Canada decades ago, “with $7 in my pocket.”
He said, at the time, he couldn’t have fathomed one day being bestowed with the “honour” and responsibility of what was just bestowed upon him.
The board was recently in a fight with the force’s chief, Jennifer Evans, who in September ignored a request from the board to stop the controversial practice of police carding, known as street checks in Peel.
Ahluwalia, along with Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey and Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, pushed to stop carding. Outgoing chair Laurie Williamson voted to keep carding in place.
On Friday Ahluwalia said the board and the force would work to improve things, “collaboratively”.
“I will do my best to serve the public and serve the police force . . . the men and women in the force who day in and day out do such an exemplary job.”
