The often tense dynamic between Toronto police and young black men will ease, the police board hopes, under a tough new “carding” policy that restricts officers’ authority to stop and document people on the street.

“One of the key objectives we put in, with the chief’s approval, is that service members do not consider race or age when deciding to initiate a contact,” said lawyer Frank Addario, who was hired by the board in November to create the new policy.

A series of Star investigations has shown that Toronto police card individuals with black and brown skin at disproportionately high rates in what are typically non-criminal encounters. Their personal details, such as name, height, weight, address and more are added to an investigative database.

“We do expect the number of instances of so-called carding, or contacts, with minority youth to drop significantly,” Addario said.

The policy, which goes before the board at a special meeting Thursday, says police must have a public safety purpose to card people on the street — a restrictive regulation that sets out the basis for a contact.

And the policy will entrench an individual’s rights by requiring police to tell people that the interaction, including the disclosure of those personal details, is voluntary.

Related:

Police carding loses its sting: Editorial

Police board policy on carding will hinge on definition of public safety

Carding by Toronto police drops sharply

Addario made the comments during a media event Monday with Toronto Police Services Board chair Alok Mukherjee to introduce the latest draft of the policy, which has gone through several revisions.

The board has plowed ahead despite relentless criticism from lawyers and activists, who say the policy will entrench carding rather than limit it and that the practice contravenes the Charter and the Human Rights Code.

Howard Morton, of the Law Union of Ontario, said he is impressed by much of the rewritten policy but plans to give a deputation to the board Thursday questioning some of language in it, including a section that describes “valid public safety” purposes that would justify the initiating or recording of a contact with a citizen.

Among them: “Collecting intelligence relating directly to an identifiable, systemic criminal problem” that would be the subject of a police directive. Morton compared that to what has happened in neighbourhoods that experience a lot of gang and gun activity and/or violence, and the collateral damage caused when police are assigned to flood such an area and then stop, question and document citizens there.

“That permits the same sort of stuff,” said Morton. “The board has come a long way in terms of recognizing the detrimental effect that carding has had in communities. Many of the proposals are improvements. However there are serious flaws in it which will have the effect of continuing the present lack of trust and fear in communities.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Mukherjee has been determined to get the policy in place before officers with the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy hit neighbourhoods in May with their summer initiative.

A Star investigation revealed TAVIS officers card at the highest rates.

The policy, expected to pass Thursday, proposes a two-pronged analysis of carding. That would involve a community study this summer into the impact of policing methods that are viewed by many as overly aggressive and racially skewed, and an annual analysis, using anonymous data, of whom police choose to stop and document.

The policy will keep officers from carding unless they are investigating or trying to prevent a specific offence, or collecting intelligence for a larger probe that has been approved by their superiors.

They are also no longer able to document someone’s personal information for a future unspecified investigation, or because of an “unsupported suspicion.”

And they can’t card to prolong an interaction in the “hope of acquiring the reasonable suspicion necessary to detain,” or to raise awareness that police are in an area.

“If it’s not an arrest and it’s not an investigative detention, the expectation is the police would tell the person they are free to go — that they are not required to provide the information,” Addario said.

The new policy should affect the massive investigative database that has been built by the Toronto force via the cards, which police now call community safety notes.

Any records prior to July 2013 that don’t serve public safety will be purged. That’s a requirement that could see hundreds of thousands of names and personal details — most of them taken from people who have never been charged or convicted — deleted.

The police practice is already the subject of a class-action lawsuit, and the Law Union of Ontario is gearing up to challenge carding at the Human Rights Tribunal.

Both the chair and Addario emphasized that the policy can be changed.

“One of the things that is progressive about the policy is that it’s a work in progress,” said Addario, who said the board will approve an amendment Thursday that requires a review of the policy and its implementation at the end of a six-month period.

The board will earmark $75,000 for the one-time summer study, and $250,000 annually for data analysis and evaluating the policy.

The board has looked to New York City and the controversy there over its police stop-and-frisk policy for cues on how to measure potential damage done by carding. Mukherjee and Addario pointed to what is known the Morris Justice Project — a collaborative research effort that teamed social scientists with community residents to gauge the effects of stop-and-frisk policing — as an example of what Toronto might copy this summer.

Mukherjee has long contended that if the board doesn’t define a framework for carding, it could be driven underground and there would be no public accounting of the practice.

The chair has also argued that carding can be a valuable investigative tool, but acknowledged that the relationship between police and the public has been severely damaged by a lack of trust — a factor he thinks can be corrected with this policy.

On Monday, Addario said people are telling the board they don’t want police to be sitting in their cars and essentially waiting for radio calls.

“That is not what the vast majority of the community has told the board they want. What they do want is respectful interactions between citizens and the police, unrelated to their investigation of specific offences.”