Article content continued

Now, Skof would be right, if his description of the regulations were accurate, which it isn’t: All the street-check regulations really say is that police, in most instances, must have an actual reason before approaching and asking you for your identity. An arbitrary stop – or one based on race, long a key concern about these interactions – simply isn’t acceptable any longer.

Photo by Tony Caldwell / Postmedia Network

And I asked the police for Bordeleau’s “anecdotal information.” No luck. He “has no further comments on that matter,” said an email from manager of media relations Carole Lavigne. (In an op-ed column in Friday’s Citizen, Bordeleau does say that police “flooding neighbourhoods” wouldn’t be the answer, possibly an oblique reference to street checks.)

The street-check regulations also contain loopholes so large you could drive the force’s $340,000 BearCat light-armoured vehicle through them: There are exemptions, for example, when investigating a specific crime and during traffic stops.

But let’s weigh this on the evidence, shall we? No doubt arbitrary street checks (also called carding) have been and can be useful.

There are rules around carding, though, and police, of all people, should know they have to follow them. And carding just doesn’t really work – at least in leading to arrests; valuable intelligence gathered under the carding process doesn’t seem to be well accounted for.

There are rules around carding, though, and police, of all people, should know they have to follow them.

A report from Britain’s Home Office says that, in 2010-11, nine per cent of 1.2 million stops and searches (a broader category of action) by London’s Metropolitan Police Service led to an arrest; by 2014-15, 14 per cent of 539,000 stops and searches led to arrests. “It is possible that a base level of stop and search activity does have an effect after which there are diminishing, or even zero, returns,” says that study, obtained by The Guardian newspaper in 2016.