Carding, the controversial police practice suspended by Chief Bill Blair, is back.

New procedures governing “community engagement,” released by Blair at a Friday news conference, lack the transparency and educational rights-based approach first sought by the Toronto Police Services Board as well as activists, lawyers and youth advocates.

Police will not have to inform citizens stopped on the street of their right to walk away in certain scenarios, nor will a detailed receipt be issued to someone who has been the subject of a stop that will result in their personal information being recorded and entered into an investigative database. They will instead be given a business card.

This is not what many had hoped for.

“It is my view that both the board policy and the TPS procedure are loaded with platitudes but do not have the essential guarantees required to prevent so-called ‘community engagement’ (more properly dubbed ‘community surveillance’) from being oppressive to the communities the TPS engages with,” said lawyer Peter Rosenthal, an outspoken critic of carding.

The board has revised its original policy, created last spring, and taken out the requirement for officers to inform citizens of their rights.

And the definition of public safety, which clarifies when police can “card,” has been broadened.

A series of Star investigations has shown that a disproportionately high number of people with black and brown skin are carded by Toronto police, in mostly non-criminal encounters. Many young people in marginalized communities don’t know that the practice isn’t applied just as liberally throughout the city, or that it even has a name.

The new procedures put the onus on the individual to know that the interaction is voluntary, which is the case when there are no reasonable grounds for police to suspect the person is involved in a criminal activity.

And the procedures rely on the officer to “immediately disengage” and release an individual where there has been a “psychological detention,” a legal term described by police board chair Alok Mukherjee as a situation in which a reasonable person would conclude that he or she has no choice but to comply because of an officer’s behaviour.

Police will no longer be restricted to carding for a public-safety purpose that includes investigating or trying to prevent offences, or ensuring that the individual carded is not at risk, as originally set out by the board.

The procedures now say police can stop and document an individual when keeping the peace, preventing crimes and in the performance of common law duties as set out in the Police Services Act.

The revised policy will go to the board next week for final approval.

A compromise by the board cleared a “log jam” that had plagued implementation of a community contacts policy since April, when the board asked Blair to write procedures that included directing officers to inform citizens of their rights.

Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard) suggested the board call in a mediator at the end of February, a decision agreed to during a conference call with members while Mukherjee was on vacation in Portugal.

Once the board agreed to the concession, Blair wrote the procedures quite quickly, said Mukherjee.

Mukherjee said it was a “good policy” and that the threshold for psychological detention is “low.”

But some critics say including that term doesn’t solve the problem.

“If the public do not know it is a voluntary interaction, then the psychological detention spoken about will automatically occur,” said law student Knia Singh, who has spoken out against the practice in Star stories. “Without a declaration that interaction is voluntary, every single (community engagement) will be in violation of the policy.”

Mukherjee defended the procedures, noting they also guard against arbitrary detentions — situations where there is no reasonable suspicion for the stop. He said the policy calls for extensive training for supervisors and front-line officers as well as annual reports on carding to the board and community satisfaction surveys.

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“If you take training, if you take oversight, if you take the board’s ability to monitor, then maybe a year or two years down the road, the board has the ability to say: ‘Here are the deficiencies that need to be addressed,’” said Mukherjee. “This is an evolutionary process.”

Blair said the procedures were a “milestone,” but noted that the document was a draft and that “this isn’t the end of the important work we do.”

The chief promised that information about an individual’s rights would be posted on the TPS website.

Tory praised the force for its work and said there was never any doubt in his mind “as to the absolute commitment of Chief Blair to bias-free policing in the city of Toronto.”

But he said an “unacceptable level of distrust has arisen between our police and communities of colour in the city over time.”

The draft procedures will now go to a committee formed after the Police and Community Engagement Review, an internal review of carding by the force that was released near the end of 2013.

The PACER committee has sometimes had heated battles with police brass during monthly meetings where members have tried — unsuccessfully — to get citizen’s-rights language included in Blair’s draft procedures.

PACER co-chair Audrey Campbell said she hadn’t had a chance to read the new procedures, but that the committee would convene a special meeting to discuss the documents and provide feedback.

Police haven’t said what details will now be retained from carding interactions, but the name of those reports has changed once again.

Instead of Community Safety Notes, the reports will be called “community engagement reports.” Officers will still record personal details from the interaction in their notebooks, and send some information into a CER database.

The details will be decided in consultation with the Ontario Human Rights Commissioner and the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

Mukherjee says CERs will include only pertinent information and not the “meaningless” details sometimes recorded in the past. Older versions of the "cards" had room to record details about the marital status of parents, for example. The race of an individual may no longer be recorded.

The draft procedure also says use of the cards will no longer be a factor in promotions. And that officers can be disciplined if they don’t follow procedures guarding against the consideration of race, ethnicity, sex, gender and age as reasons for a stop, unless the details are part of a description in an investigation.

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