A group of concerned citizens – most of them former gate keepers of the city – stood shoulder to shoulder in Toronto on Wednesday to broadcast a message: They want the controversial police practice of carding to end.

“We all know young black men, young brown men and women who’ve been going about a good productive healthy life,” said former Toronto mayor Barbara Hall, who recently retired as head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, “who all of a sudden have been stopped and treated in a way that changes their lives, often that makes them feel devalued in our society. That makes them wonder ‘where do we fit in this?’

“That’s not a policy that we want to maintain. That’s a policy that needs to be ended now.”

Hall is part of Concerned Citizens to End Carding, the group which held the press conference at city hall and issued a statement that they “vehemently” oppose carding and “resent having to witness its debilitating impact on our neighbours.”

More than 50 prominent Torontonians have added their name to the anti-carding cause, including former government ministers Zanana Akande, Jean Augustine and Alvin Curling, retired chief justice Roy McMurtry, several current and former United Way heads, educators, and Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations.

Around 30 of them were on hand for the press conference, which was fronted by Councillor Michael Thompson (open Michael Thompson's policard) who’d been asked to advise the group because of his public anti-carding stance as a former member of the Toronto Police Services Board.

And Gordon Cressy, a former city councillor and a founding member of the citizens group, who gestured to Harold Braithwaite at the back and asked how the former director of education for the Peel District School Board, who is black, could have been carded at least eight times and Cressy none.

Toronto police documented over a million individuals in carding encounters between 2008 and 2013. Very few of these encounters were accompanied by an arrest or criminal charge.

Hall, who was one of many speakers at the event, laughingly referred to the prominent citizens around her as “the formers,” but she was never more serious and passionate than when she turned back to the subject of human rights.

The former mayor spent the last three days in Ottawa as an honourary witness to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools, where she said she thought non-stop about “what can happen when bad policy is allowed to stand. In that case it was secret. Many people didn’t know. But we know.”

Hall, who spent a decade at the human rights commission, said she came to learn during that time that everyone’s rights are connected and that any risk to the rights of people in heavily-policed communities means that “all of our rights are at risk.”

Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard), who sits on the Toronto Police Services Board, met with three of the group’s members before the press conference and told them that he and police chief Mark Saunders were working to reform the carding process.

But if that’s the case, said many in the group who believe in Tory, the time to make that secret work public is now.

“The mayor talked about what he’s been doing quietly in meetings,” said Golden who was one of the three to meet Tory. “I know him as an extremely fine and good hearted man. I believe to eliminate carding as we know it, is his intention.

“I think there is a gap between these private efforts and what needs to be done publicly,” said Golden. “It is time, I agree with the sentiment today, it’s time now.”

Carding was suspended in January under former Chief Bill Blair, but previously, the practice gave officers the right to stop individuals in non-criminal encounters, question them and record personal information without informing them of their right not to participate if they were not under investigation.

Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash said most of the concerned citizens group’s comments appear to be focused on how carding used to be. Pugash highlighted comments Saunders has made in recent media interviews about how the new carding will be more “surgical” — not “random” — and focused on people who “commit crimes.” Officers will receive more training, said Pugash.

“Mark Saunders has said from Day One that he believes that fundamental changes are necessary. He’s made clear that any activity that contravenes any part of the Charter or the Human Rights Code is absolutely unacceptable,” said Pugash, who highlighted comments made by Saunders that the new carding will not catch “straight-A” students.

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In describing an end to “random” carding” in a Globe and Mail interview, Saunders used an analogy: “You’re going to catch a billion herrings with that net but you’re also going to catch the odd dolphin, the odd sea turtle,” Saunders told writer Marcus Gee in one of the few one-on-one interviews Saunders has given since being sworn in. “Those sea turtles, those dolphins – that’s a kid that’s getting an A in math, science and technology.”

Saunders also said he would seal past carding information.

Golden said her peers were in no way saying that police don’t have the right to question people when they have a legitimate basis for doing so and are in the middle of an investigation.

What they object to is “this kind of random targeting on the basis of ethnicity and race. It cannot be right.”

The concerned citizens group has launched their petition online hoping to attract thousands of names to the stop-carding movement.

Pugash said people have tried to “conflate” carding with racial profiling. He said carding is legal and that racial profiling is not. Saunders, said Pugash, is “addressing the concerns going forward.”

Progressive reforms to limit carding, passed in 2014 by the Toronto Police Services Board, were never put into practice by former chief Bill Blair. The chief suspended carding in January, avoiding a February deadline to write procedures that were in line with the policy.

Many activists were shocked when the board passed a watered-down policy this April, leaving language that allowed police to card in a wide variety of situations and with a requirement to inform people of their rights, but only if asked.

That move by the board, after nearly three years moving at a snails pace towards reform, together with a devastating account of journalist Desmond Cole’s carding experiences in Toronto Life, proved a tipping point.

“Frankly I hope it gets the attention of the mayor and the new police chief and the police services board,” said Cressy of the petition in an interview a day before the press conference.

“There was a chance a few months ago. It was looking alright. Then it slipped away.”