A who’s-who of Ontario’s most influential progressive voices and respected civic builders, including retired chief justice Roy McMurtry, is calling for an end to the Toronto police practice of carding.

The group, which calls itself Concerned Citizens to End Carding, includes former government ministers Zanana Akande, Jean Augustine and Alvin Curling, former Toronto mayors Barbara Hall and David Crombie, several current and former United Way heads, educators, and Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations.

The group is to hold a news conference at Toronto City Hall on Wednesday morning to call for an end to a practice that has led many in the city “to distrust and disrespect our police,” according to a statement issued by the group.

“Anger, hurt and unrest have replaced any benefits police may derive from this practice.”

“We do not want a new generation of youth, particularly black and brown youth, to have to go through this experience,” said Gordon Cressy, a former city councillor who is one of the founding members of the concerned citizens group. “It’s diminishing and demeaning, and it leaves scars,” he said in an interview Tuesday. Instead of building trust with police, these youth “become adversaries.”

Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard)’s office announced late Tuesday that he’s asked the leaders of the group to meet with him, police board chair Alok Mukherjee and Chief Mark Saunders (by phone from the U.S.) before the news conference, to air their views and “ask questions and have all of the relevant facts before them.”

Mary Anne Chambers, a former provincial children and youth services minister, will speak at Wednesday’s event.

“The matter of randomly selecting people in a way that reflects personal biases or stereotypes is not the way to preserve human rights and social justice in this wonderful city of Toronto,” said Chambers. “I think it’s time for everyone who is concerned about this to make their feelings known.”

By Tuesday afternoon, there were 46 prominent names on the list.

Between 2008 and 2013, Toronto police stopped, questioned and documented more than a million individuals in mostly non-criminal encounters. Critics have questioned the rationale for the stops and say many of them are arbitrary and contravene Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Black people and, to a lesser extent, people with brown skin are more likely than white people to be subjected to the police procedure, a series of Toronto Star investigations has shown.

The group of prominent citizens joins a growing chorus of Toronto voices calling for an approach to the stops that is sensitive to civil rights, or abolishing the practice outright. The issue, which has festered for years, is now in the hands of the new chief and a reconfigured Toronto Police Services Board, which counts Tory as a member.

Saunders has vowed to end what he calls “random” carding but sees the practice as a valuable investigative tool that he has no plans of scrapping.

“We believe that carding violates the human rights of citizens,” reads the statement by the group. “It goes against the principles of our Charter Rights. It paints a disturbing picture and repeats a narrative that is reminiscent of ugly practices that were historically endured by racialized residents, particularly those of African Canadian backgrounds…”

The group is urging Tory, Saunders and Mukherjee to “immediately cease the practice of carding. And we call on all citizens of this city to step forward and make known their distaste of this fear-mongering practice.”

It is not the group’s wish, reads the statement, to interfere with the “common police practice of conducting criminal investigations,” but to “correct an injustice that harms police/community relations.”

Mukherjee told the Star that any police practice that has a discriminatory impact is "abhorrent" and that he believes the board was on the right path in April 2014, when it passed a progressive. rights-based community contacts policy that would have strongly curbed carding.

"Sadly, the intransigence and obduracy of one man, former police chief Bill Blair, undermined our ability as a community to ‎move forward with the implementation of this policy," said Mukherjee. "And the law hampered the Board's ability to deal with the obstruction."

Since Saunders was chosen to replace former chief Bill Blair in April, the issue of carding has intensified, due in large part to a Toronto Life article by journalist Desmond Cole, who wrote of his personal experiences of being stopped by police.

“I think the… article became a tipping point for a lot in the non-black community,” said Cressy, who has served as United Way president and as a board member for the Urban Alliance on Race Relations. “There was a feeling the black community had been fighting this on their own.

“To me, it’s a way of saying that this community is people of all backgrounds. And it’s time to stand up and be counted for a practice that’s day is long past and does far more damage than it does good.”

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The list began after a call from David McCamus, a former president of Xerox Canada, who helped bring Nobel Peace price winner Desmond Tutu to Toronto in the 1986 for a $1 million fundraising campaign for United Way, when Cressy was president of the charitable organization.

The 83-year-old told Cressy how “very upset” he was about carding and thought that they could do something together.

When Cressy began making calls, he realized “that something was resonating here, and that if we all came together, we could make a point that’s important for the city today.”

The former councillor said the list — which includes bestselling author Joy Fielding and restaurateur Peter Oliver of Oliver and Bonacini — had mushroomed over three days and that he was resolved to close it Tuesday by 7 p.m. Meric Gertler, president of the University of Toronto, and former Torstar board member Spencer Lanthier had just signed on.

Councillor Michael Thompson (open Michael Thompson's policard), a former member of the police services board, is listed as a senior advisor to the group.

On Tuesday, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, also a strong critic of carding, announced that it is seeking intervener status in a pending Toronto police disciplinary case that stems from a 2011 police stop of four black teenagers that ended in a dangerous takedown. Police officers with the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy unit stopped the teens outside their Toronto Community Housing building while they were making their way to an evening program.

The teens are suing the police, alleging racial bias. They allege they were asked to provide identification and after a brief exchange in which one of the teens attempted to exercise his rights and walk away, one of the officers punched that teen, and drew and pointed his handgun at the group. The exchange was caught on TCHC security video.

Interim chief human rights commissioner Ruth Goba wants to intervene in the case because it involves a complaint of racial profiling, and police disciplinary tribunal decisions may be considered in future cases that involve the enforcement of trespassing laws or community policing.

The Star sought comment Tuesday for this story from police, but none had been received at time of publication.

Carding dropped dramatically in mid-2013, when police officers were required to provide receipts to those they chose to card.

Currently, carding is suspended, but new procedures written in April by Blair are in Saunders’ hands. The procedures were written to conform to a watered-down police board policy, which replaced the 2014 policy that would have required officers to inform citizens of their rights during carding stops.

A 2012 internal police report, obtained by the Star, found that fewer than one in 10 contact cards filled out between 2009 and 2011 was for purely intelligence-led reasons.

Saunders was the lead author of the report, which contained an internal analysis of carding that found no evidence to support “notions or activities of racially biased” policing.

The Saunders report was never made public, and the police board that chose him as chief this year did not see it.

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