They’re called “street checks” in Peel, but they’re every bit as ugly as carding in Toronto – and equally deserving of a ban.

A Star investigation that analyzed data for Mississauga and Brampton has found that black people who have committed no apparent crime are far more likely to be stopped by Peel police than those with white skin. That’s a pattern consistent with racial profiling.

Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie has said she will move to suspend the controversial street checks program as soon as Friday’s meeting of the Peel Police Services Board. While an immediate suspension would at least put further abuse on hold, the only real solution is an outright ban on this toxic practice, whether it goes by the name of carding, street checks, “community engagement,” or any other euphemism.

It involves having police stop people, apparently at random, in order to ask a series of intrusive questions. The approach is a means of having officers engage with the community by making them more familiar with the people they meet. Information collected in this way can be entered into a Peel police database for possible use in subsequent investigations.

Although widely used, especially in Toronto before it was suspended pending reform, no Canadian police force (including Peel) has yet produced solid proof that the benefit from street checks outweighs the harm that’s done.

As reported by the Star’s San Grewal, blacks accounted for 21 per cent of street checks done in Brampton and Mississauga between 2009 and 2014. Yet they represent just 9 per cent of the population in those cities, according to census data from 2011.

In contrast, whites form more than 40 per cent of the population but account for only 28 per cent of street checks.

These findings provide a foundation of hard numbers to support a tower of anecdotal evidence. People with black or brown skin have long felt they were subject to undue and unfair police scrutiny. Many describe being stopped by officers for no other reason than “driving while black.” Street checks appear to be just another version of that phenomenon. And they need to stop.

Queen’s Park has been consulting with police, concerned community groups, civil libertarians, the Ontario Human Right Commission and the general public with the aim of introducing a reform of carding later this fall. But it’s too late for that. Carding has generated so much justifiable bitterness in visible minority neighbourhoods that there’s really no acceptable way to retain even a reformed version of this practice.

Instead of attempting to fix the unfixable, the province should formally ban carding and issue a set of clear new instructions to police on how to deal with people who are guilty of no apparent crime.

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