Don’t stop. Don’t talk.

Ask them to arrest you or leave you alone.

That’s the advice I’ve contemplated giving to young black men who are the target of discriminatory police practice of carding.

You are not a criminal. You have done nothing wrong — except Walking While Black. The approaching officer does not accuse you of a crime. The officer doesn’t inform you of an investigation or that you are a suspect?

Don’t stop. Don’t talk.

My sons talked me out of it.

“You’ll get these kids shot,” my law-graduate son argued, already cynical.

Now, a judge seems to back my view.

In awarding damages to a man stopped in Moss Park and beaten up by police after he refused to engage the officer, citing his right to walk about the street without police harassment, Superior Court Justice Frederick Myers wrote:

“One who is not being investigated for criminality is allowed to walk down the street on a cold night with his or her hands in the pockets and to tell the inquisitive police officers to get lost without being detained, searched, exposed to sub-zero temperatures, or assaulted.”

You think?

Judge Myers awarded the victim, Mutaz Elmardy, $27,000 in damages in the 2011 incident.

“That police officers shattered Mr. Elmardy’s feeling of the law strikes at the rule of law itself and requires condemnation by the court,” the judge wrote.

You, sir, are a credit to your profession.

The same cannot be said of our Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard). Since his election, it seems like he has done everything to perpetuate this odious police practice — from manipulating the membership of the police board, to hiring a chief committed to carry on the controversial exercise.

Tory calls carding corrosive. He says the police board is reviewing it. Yet he wouldn’t demand basic police accountability: provide those carded with a receipt of the encounter and respectfully inform them of their right not to engage.

Last week he told delegates at a conference that he was glad to live in a city where you don’t have to talk to police if you don’t want to. Minutes later, his new chief said police have a right to stop and speak to citizens.

Then Tory proceeded to tell reporters that crime would escalate if carding’s fishing expeditions were stopped.

In other words, cops have to go around and racially profile young black men, because, y’know, that’s where the criminals are. If we break a few eggs, that’s collateral damage, er social cost.

And you expect belligerent teenagers faced with a “stop and talk” order from belligerent cops to cite chapter and verse of their rights? Four teens from Lawrence Heights tried that one night in 2011 only to have a police officer draw his gun, physically rough them up and lay frivolous charges.

“We’re not doing that again,” is their view, now.

Should we not expect expression of outrage from city council? Civil society? Civic organizations? Social agencies? Sports organizations? Corporate and civic leaders who revel in the idea of a diversified, equitable and peaceful city?

Their silence is deafening in the wake of the judge’s decision.

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In a separate case last March, Justice Ian Nordheimer gave another signal that the judiciary takes a dim view of police officers breaking the law — even when their actions uncover weapons or wrongdoing. How much more, then, when we are talking about carding — a practice everyone agrees is a fishing expedition not related to investigations.

A Star analysis of data from police carding files shows black and brown citizens are the subjected to carding at rates four times higher than the norm. The numbers show black citizens face an even greater chance of being stopped when they travel outside of the declared high-crime areas. In one downtown district, a black man faces a risk of being carded at a rate 17 times that of a white counterpart, the police data shows.

It seems that only our judges are prepared to tell our police to live by the very laws they are sworn to uphold.

There will always be cowboys masquerading as modern-day peace officers. Proper police training is intended to weed out these deviants. The danger is our current system has created an environment and culture where too many police officers are empowered, encouraged, expected to and are rewarded for carding citizens.

Mayor John Tory has heard from the victims. He sat stone-faced on the police services board last month and listened to young and old, parents and youths, pour out their hearts about the hurt caused by carding.

Then, like Pharaoh, he hardened his heart and reversed all the reforms the board had previously approved — changes that would have tamed the dangerous aspects of carding.

For example, the old policy required police to tell citizens that the carding encounter was strictly voluntary and the person could leave. In other words, “No, you are not a suspect; you are not being investigated or detained.”

But that is too civilized for Tory or new Chief Mark Saunders. Their policy preference sees black men as criminals. Or criminals in waiting.

That is hard to swallow.

The weak-kneed Police Services Board, coupled with silence from city council and the entire leadership structure of this city, is bringing to a boil a toxic, corrosive, bubbling inferno of anger over this issue.

After years of telling my kids the police are our friends, we now conclude they have no respect for us, or our kind.

Don’t stop. Don’t talk.

Next: A push-backstrategy

Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca

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