My take is that the local police aren't malicious or corrupt relative to most places in the world, but that they're a large ponderous self-involved bureaucracy that lazily gets away with what it can. That the head of the union is the son of a former chief of police and that both that union head and his brother have been involved in significant corruption accusations does make it look like there's the kind of sleazy underbelly here reminiscent of LA Confidential type of stories, but I still think that institutional privilege is the dominant force rather than individual graft. A thought experiment: when you're on your daily travels in the city, compare the number of TTC employees (or their working vehicles) that you see relative to the number of police representatives. They must be comparable organizations in terms of employee numbers and budget pressure. There are times when I can walk a good chunk of downtown and unless I was within a couple blocks of the station, I wouldn't recall seeing any police except when they were doing paid-duty work beside a construction site (it seems to me they're now less visible doing that too - a good thing). I know that not every police officer is in uniform, but then not every TTC worker is front-line. If I'm out in any part of the city in the daytime, I will see many many TTC workers.
For what they cost, police should have a much more visible (and mostly non-threatening) presence on the streets, maintaining a low-level basic order. Maybe if they were out there regularly instead of relying on publicity blitzes there'd be less bitter complaint in this city of the kind that says all cyclists run red lights, or drivers are parking everywhere in bike lanes.
A witnessed incident that illustrates my concern: A couple summers ago, on the day that Spain won the World Cup, I was watching the last few minutes with a couple friends in the bar at the Sheraton, across from City Hall. After the final goal was scored we walked up Yonge to Yonge-Dundas Square. We weren't travelling fast. When we arrived there traffic had stopped because celebrants had taken over the intersection. Stopped travelling north on Yonge, about five, six cars back from the intersection, was that hippo tourist vehicle. Some of the rejoicing decided to climb on top the hippo and wave their flags from there. At first the tourists travelling on board seemed to think it was funny but after five, ten minutes of yahoos marching over the roof, rocking the hippo, and trying to climb in the windows you could see them becoming anxious. It was left to one small young Asian female guide to try to push a bunch of overexcited young males back from the windows. Eventually the tourists left out the back. It probably went on for twenty minutes from the time I arrived, and no sign of one police officer, despite the fact that a very large station was probably no further away from the square than is the Sheraton I had walked from. Shouldn't the police be aware that large demonstrations always happen at Yonge-Dundas Square? It's a very busy area, shouldn't there be almost a constant police presence moving through the Square and intersection and along the neighbouring streets? All it took was one car turning on its siren to see everyone scamper off the bus, although they didn't then clear the street. When police did arrive it was as a squad of several officers and cars. If there aren't enough officers to keep a visible presence on the streets, from where do they then marshal the larger mobs to over respond to incidents? A few years back, when a deer wandered into the core, it was reported that large numbers of police and emergency personnel responded to that, to spend a couple hours staring Bambi down.