Recently, Mayor John Tory reached out to Black Lives Matters to request our advice with respect to carding data that has been stored with the Toronto Police Service. In keeping with our commitment to have public conversations around the issues we are working on, we felt it appropriate to reply in a public forum.

We’re hopeful Mayor Tory is looking to take action on the carding data that has been collected in violation of the human rights of hundreds in our community. Though the province had committed to taking this on, their recently adopted regulation misses the mark and leaves many of our concerns unaddressed. With an issue as urgent and troublesome as this, we hope the city will be taking action and showing leadership on this matter soon.

The carding data that has been collected amounts to a systemic violation of the human rights of the black Torontonians. Carding is a practice that subjects members of this community to scrutiny and surveillance by law enforcement in ways that non-black groups are not subject to.

The practice is racist and anti-black and countless human rights organizations, lawyers, the Ontario Human Rights Commission and even the province has acknowledged as much. And as we learned in the recent coroner’s inquest, had carding been considered an unlawful practice by the province two years ago, Jermaine Carby would still be alive today.

There is no question what needs to happen to this data: it must be eliminated from the Toronto Police Service and anywhere else it exists and this must happen immediately.

There is no reason data collected through the unjust surveillance and documentation of people in our communities should remain on file. No one else should bear the sometimes fatal consequences of this type of systemic discrimination by law enforcement.

But we also want to learn from this data. So we are also suggesting to the mayor that the carding data be provided confidentially to the Anti-Black Racism Network — a social justice group established in 2014 comprised of university professors, students, lawyers, social workers, activists, and community and organizational leaders — for study into the ways carding has targeted and negatively affected black communities.

Throughout the public discussion on carding, community members have made it clear that the lack of quantitative data available on how anti-black racism manifests in Toronto is a significant problem. The data should be given to trusted members of our community to review it in a way that can assist other municipalities in policy creation and to help us analyze and prevent certain manifestations of anti-black policing in the future. We are suggesting the data on file be transferred to the Anti-Black Racism Network because of its academic expertise with respect to this type of analysis.

The provincial government has taken steps to enact new regulations that supposedly are meant to end carding, but a close review of the regulation makes it very clear it will not outlaw the practice as has been widely reported. Even more concerning to us, is that this regulation does nothing to address the carding data that has been collected across the province and remains on file at police boards. For whatever reason, the province has failed to take action on this issue and has failed black and indigenous communities across Ontario as a result. We are hoping the City of Toronto can take stronger action on this issue.

There is so much more to be done with respect to carding and anti-black racism in policing as a whole. We have not yet heard much about the city’s plans for a public meeting on the matter and it is time for the mayor to make good on this promise. This is the city’s chance do right by our communities where the province has failed. We hope the city takes it.

Sandy Hudson and Yusra Khogali are co-founders of Black Lives Matter Toronto.

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