Brigadier-General Dennis Colburn Draper CMG DSO* (February 20, 1875 – November 8, 1951) was a Canadian officer who served as the chief constable of the Toronto Police Department from 1928 to 1946.
[2][6] Several years later, Draper himself was charged with dangerous driving in 1941 following an incident in which four people were injured near Cobourg, Ontario, which again elicited cries for his dismissal.
[1] However, Draper won the support of the city's business community and political elite by using the police force to break strikes and disrupt left-wing groups.
Draper is best remembered for organizing a Red Squad within the police department to suppress strikes and left wing meetings, political rallies and demonstrations in the 1930s.
The Red Squad targeted the Communist Party of Canada, socialists and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation as well as trade unions and demonstrations of the unemployed during the Great Depression.
The Police Commission subsequently ordered Draper to restrain his men from interfering with public meetings unless a law had actually been broken.
Not eligible for a pension as he had never been a frontline officer, he was persuaded to resign with an offer that the department would continue to pay him a salary of $2,000 for at least five years to act as a "consultant".