In a high stakes move, the Toronto police board has passed a revised community engagement policy Thursday, rushing through a document before Chief Bill Blair leaves at the end of the month without the “progressive” citizen safeguards first sought by the board a year ago.

“We will remember this,” Anthony Morgan, a lawyer with the African Canadian Legal Clinic told the board. Morgan was one of the many speakers who urged the board not to pass the policy at a board meeting at police headquarters.

Some legal experts and activists are wondering why the board risked a public backlash by watering down the original policy. Blair has cited operational concerns as the reason he refused for nearly a year to write procedures until the restrictive limits to carding in the policy were removed.

The board’s inability to motivate Blair has led to a complaint by lawyer Vilko Zbogar — a member of the progressive Law Union of Ontario — asking the Ontario Civilian Police Commission to investigate the board’s conduct, claiming its members abdicated their responsibilities as civilian overseers.

The letter to the commission says the board’s capitulation “after years of community consultation, has shattered public confidence in the Board and has discredited and compromised the integrity of the Board.

“Fundamentally, what is at issue here is the integrity of the system of civilian oversight of police,” wrote Zbogar.

The carding policy — referred to as community engagement — could now face a judicial review in court, a threat made by the Law Union of Ontario this week, as well as an inquiry by the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Ruth Goba, interim chief commissioner of the OHRC, released a video Wednesday on YouTube warning that the commission would use its “full range of powers” to stop carding.

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Board member Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard) said after the board vote that he chose to support the revised policy because it was the only way forward after an eight-month stalemate.

“That policy could not and was not operationalized,” said Tory. “Communication was diminishing, attitudes were hardening on all sides,” says Tory, although he says any suggestion that Chief Bill Blair was insubordinate were unfounded.

But the revised policy passed by the board Thursday is missing “crucial restrictions” that were contained in the original, critics say.

Gone are restrictive clauses that said police could only card individuals when they are investigating specific offences or protecting a person; and that officers had to inform individuals of their right to leave, which is the case in non-criminal encounters.

Instead, Blair says his new procedures, which weren’t in evidence at the board meeting, instruct his officers to tell people why they are being stopped if the person asks. And that police will tell a person they are free to go, if the person asks.

Officers will be required to hand out a business card to acknowledge the interaction, but not a full receipt, which the board first ordered in 2012. At the time, officers just stopped carding because they were worried the receipts were an invitation for complaints.

The original policy “would have set a gold standard,” said Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, who noted that even though it basically required police to simply comply with existing laws that there was nothing like it in Canada. “It wasn’t perfect, but it was something we could work with.”

Tory promised a “quick, independent and very complete review” of the policy will be done later this year by a third party, with a promise from the board the policy and procedures will change if a problem is identified.

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The board’s decision ignored the advice of at least 10 Toronto council members, who signed an open letter Thursday requesting the board members reintroduce language from the original policy.

“We, the undersigned Toronto City Councillors, strongly disagree with the proposed modified community engagement, or carding, policy being brought before the Board today.”

Mayor John Tory voted for the policy along with board colleagues Dhun Noria, Councillor Chin Lee (open Chin Lee's policard) and Andrew Pringle.

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