It’s becoming clearer by the day that Toronto’s new police chief, Mark Saunders, can neither ignore nor escape the issue of “carding.” Saunders has been in the big chair for just a week now, yet evidence of the distrust engendered by the controversial practice continues to mount.

The latest comes from the Star’s Jim Rankin and Patty Winsa, who have led efforts to put carding under the microscope. They report that in 2012 Saunders was the lead author on a previously undisclosed internal police analysis of carding data that dismissed the idea that it fed into bias against black or brown people.

Saunders was a police superintendant at the time, overseeing a review of how officers interact with the public. The analysis he produced found no evidence in the practice of carding to support “notions or activities of racially biased” policing.

That’s troubling because carding – the practice of stopping people on the street, questioning them and documenting the encounter – has become a flash-point in relations between Toronto police and minority communities. A series of Star investigations has shown that people with black or brown skin are disproportionately targeted – a pattern consistent with racial profiling.

Now, we learn from the 2012 internal police force document, the new chief signed off on a flawed analysis that minimized the negative effect of carding on black- and brown-skinned people. We don’t know whether Saunders’ thinking on the issue has changed since then, but in his recent public pronouncements he has insisted on the importance of allowing police officers to stop and question people. At the same time, he recognizes that the “social cost” of such activity should be minimized.

All signs are that approach isn’t going to make the controversy go away. Black and brown people still complain of being stopped and asked to identify themselves far more often than others. Desmond Cole, a young black journalist, wrote movingly in Toronto Life of being interrogated more than 50 times – all because of “the skin I’m in.” This is demeaning and plain wrong.

A Superior Court judge, Frederick Myers, ruled recently that police have no right to stop and detain people without cause. And Ruth Goba, interim chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, wrote in the Star last weekend that the new chief must recognize that the social cost of carding as currently practiced is not acceptable: “Effective policing is much harder without the trust of all the communities he serves, including the black and brown communities.”

The bitterness over carding did not have to get to this point. The Toronto Police Services Board came up with sensible recommendations last year that would have required officers to have a valid public-safety reason to stop and question someone. They would also have been required to tell people they have a right to walk away, and to issue a receipt to those who were carded.

Unfortunately, the board watered down those conditions in April after former chief Bill Blair dug in his heels and refused to implement them. Saunders inherited a fatally flawed policy that continues to drive a wedge between the police service and minority communities – a tragically ironic situation for the city’s first black chief.

One way or the other, Saunders and the police services board must fix this situation – or face an ongoing erosion of trust and an escalating chorus of criticism. They will have to overhaul the practice of carding by bringing in the type of guarantees that Blair rejected. Or they will have to conclude that it cannot be reformed, and dump the policy entirely.

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

Read more about: