To those with a taste for police procedurals, currently the longest running dramatic series is the episodic debate over random street checks and carding in Ontario.

It is a debate heavy with rhetoric from boosters who praise carding as being an invaluable investigative tool to help both deter and solve crime. It is equally laden with anguish from marginalized communities that have fallen victim to this ineffective act of institutionalized racism.

The twists and turns of the plot line have plagued front-line officers, civic leaders and provincial governments alike. Time and again, carding policies have been proposed to bridge the divide; then modified, trashed and replaced with a new iteration.

Into this quagmire of technicality and failure, Justice Michael Tulloch has stepped forward with a proposal that is daring, final and tremendously simple to implement: Get rid of the practice of carding, once and for all.

Released on New Year’s Eve with little fanfare, Tulloch’s report was commissioned by the previous Ontario government to review a new regulation it had introduced in early 2017 aimed at reducing the practice of police carding.

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In his response, Tulloch takes pains to differentiate legitimate “street check” investigations from random carding. In the latter, police have no suspicion that the person they are questioning may have been involved in any crime. Instead, acting on a hunch, or for no reason at all, officers simply fish for information they can enter in police databases for future reference.

Tulloch’s report echoes previous findings by criminologists and successive Toronto Star investigations that carding is prone to abuse and lacking in effectiveness. Rather than decreasing crime, it deters members of marginalized communities from seeking the help of police or coming forward to help solve crimes.

The ills of carding dramatically outweigh its dubious benefits. It disproportionately targets racialized groups. In focusing primarily on Black, brown and Indigenous men, it conveys a message that they are predisposed to commit crimes solely on account of their racial origin. Hundreds of thousands of individuals have been stopped and documented in this manner simply because they struck a passing police officer as appearing suspicious.

The practice has left many racialized Ontarians feeling resigned, oppressed and dispirited. Others harbour a smouldering resentment and distrust of police. The final indignity is that there is no mechanism for having this information removed or nullified from police databases.

Police unions and other supporters of carding counter with a theory that, without having it as a policing tool, a current rise in gun crime and the homicide rate would continue. However, this theory is based not on empirical research, but on unsubstantiated conventional wisdom and gut instinct.

How refreshing it would be if police unions and the tabloid press were — just this once — to champion more sophisticated notions of crime prevention, such as enhanced education, job creation and community programs for at-risk youth.

We have potentially arrived at a watershed moment. Tulloch, a top appellate court judge and one-time Crown prosecutor with roots of his own in the Black community, exudes credibility. He has consulted widely with police, cultural organizations and individuals affected by carding.

So, what fate awaits his report? Will the province heed his urging to bring more clarity to the information police can collect; to enhance training for officers and to impose disciplinary consequences for those who persistently breach strict regulations governing carding and street checks?

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To be sure, it can only irk Premier Ford that Tulloch’s report was commissioned by the former Liberal government he so detests. It is also discouraging to recall that recommendations from a previous review Tulloch held into reshaping police oversight in Ontario have disappeared into a sea of indifference.

At the same time, the premier hails from a region where carding and racial profiling are an undeniable blot on policing. Ford has made much of his purported friendship with the Black community. Here is his chance to prove that this claim is more than hot air.

If Ford intends to be known by his self-proclaimed moniker — the “people’s premier” — he should implement Tulloch’s recommendations as the final episode in this dreary, long-running drama.

Daniel Brown is a Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer and a vice president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association. Follow him on Twitter: @danielbrownlaw

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