Hamilton Police say they did just 30 street checks in 2015, compared to nearly 200 in 2014 and thousands in previous years, according to numbers obtained by CBC Hamilton under a Freedom of Information request.

It's a stunning near-disappearance of a practice that police have publicly defended as a crucial part of their job, but Thursday just described as part of a "downward trend."

Senior police have said limiting the tool will make Hamilton less safe. They stood by that argument in the face of criticism from communities of colour and anti-poverty advocates who say the practice of being stopped and asked for ID even when not under investigation is unconstitutional.

Hamilton Police street checks have dramatically decreased in recent years, numbers obtained by CBC Hamilton reveal. (Kelly Bennett/CBC)

The province has come up with new rules governing when police ask people for ID in street stops. But this sharp decline happened even before these new rules take effect.

And so it's unclear what happened in Hamilton last year.

Did higher-ups privately tell officers not to use the tool anymore?



Did public attention and criticism of the practice lead to informal decisions among officers to skip the paperwork that would characterize their interactions as "street checks"?



Are police still stopping people who aren't under investigation, but just not calling it a "street check"?

Something like that last question happened in Toronto, one study showed.

When Toronto's police board moved to curb the carding practice there, their numbers plunged. But a study commissioned by the oversight board found the practice of stops and questioning was still ongoing — officers just weren't filling out the cards that would allow the interactions to be tracked as carding.

'Unintended consequences'

To the public, and to their oversight board, senior Hamilton Police management has presented street checks as a vital tool for keeping the city safe.

Last summer, former Chief Glenn De Caire sternly warned the province there would be "unintended consequences to limiting this investigative aid."

Hamilton Police former chief Glenn De Caire wrote to the public safety minister in support of police street checks continuing. (Samantha Craggs/CBC)

Reducing "officer-community engagement" by limiting tools like street checks "can lead to increased crime, violence, injury and death," De Caire said.

The police union and top-level police here have previously talked about a "chilling effect" from scrutiny on street checks in Ontario, but other major cities in the province still did thousands of street checks last year.

The service gave no public indication that officers would not be conducting street checks in the course of their proactive policing.

Disproportionate impact

Even though there were dramatically fewer street checks, the proportion of black people impacted by the stops grew even more.

Nearly 17 per cent of the stops, five out of 30, were black men. One aboriginal man was carded twice. (The black population in Hamilton was 3 per cent in the 2011 census.)

Among the 30 street checks Hamilton Police did in 2015, five were of black people and two were of the same aboriginal man. The black population in Hamilton was 3.2 per cent of Hamilton's population in the 2011 census. (Source: Hamilton Police Service)

The 2015 street checks were even more disproportionate compared to Hamilton's black and aboriginal populations than the previously known street check numbers from 2010 to 2014.

Street checks, colloquially called "carding" in Toronto, is a practice that involves stopping people who have not necessarily done anything wrong to question them, record their ID and whereabouts, and later enter that information in the police database.

Inhibiting 'core functions'?

Deputy Chief Eric Girt said in a presentation last July to the police oversight board that the service was not happy about the decrease to 188 street checks in 2014.

"We certainly don't support that, because we believe in the utility of these checks," he said then.

Hamilton Police have said the only officers who do street checks are the typically downtown-focused ACTION teams. (Benjamin Dyment/CBC) "Are we getting to a stage where our officers are inhibited from doing their core functions because of the repercussions they feel may flow from it?" he said in July. "That's the fundamental tension."

He attributed the drop between 2013 and 2014 to a chilling effect from public attention in Toronto on "carding," the colloquial term there for the street checks practice. (Sustained public attention on street checks and carding in Hamilton didn't begin until early 2015, so it's unclear how much of a local impact that that Toronto scrutiny had here in 2014.)

A request to interview Girt about the numbers was not granted Wednesday or Thursday.

Hamilton Police have said previously that street checks are only done by ACTION officers, and their mandate has expanded since 2010. The service noted in a statement that crime is down in the neighbourhoods where its ACTION team deploys.

'Greater scrutiny now'

What you had was officers who know that there's greater scrutiny now on this practice, choosing just to not record the information. - Neil Price, consultant who studied the aftermath of 2014 carding regulations in Toronto

Neil Price's research firm Logical Outcomes was hired by the Toronto Police Services Board to survey residents after police in that city passed new restrictions on its carding practice in 2014.

It didn't surprise him to hear that Hamilton's numbers had dropped so dramatically. Officially, carding went down in Toronto after those new rules were passed.

"People we spoke to said that this hasn't abated at all," he said. "What you had was officers who know that there's greater scrutiny now on this practice, choosing just to not record the information."

Clint Twolan, president of the Hamilton Police Association, said it's not as simple as looking at recent years' crime stats in comparison to the number of street checks.

"Street checks is a piece of the puzzle," he said. "It's going to have an impact."

But he said it's hard to say exactly "what the trickle-down impact is going to be."

'Where's the corresponding spike in crime?'

But Price said if the tool is as important as police say it is, communities should be feeling it when its use plummets.

"If we've seen a decrease in the cards, where's the corresponding spike in crime?" Price said. "People are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. There's been no evidence to show this practice does anything remotely like suppressing crime."

Twolan said he wouldn't draw a causal relationship between the decline of street checks and any trends in crime in Hamilton. But he's still concerned about the minister's regulations, he said.

"It's not that simple, and I'm not going to suggest that (cause and effect)," he said. "But to suggest that it's not going to have an impact, either, I don't think is right."

kelly.bennett@cbc.ca | @kellyrbennett