Saying that buying more full-body scanners would be “putting the cart ahead the horse,” Mayor John Tory and the Toronto police board requested more information about Toronto police strip search practices, asking why officers conduct far more of the searches than police elsewhere.

“For my part, I’m not interested in hearing about expanding this and buying more equipment, regardless of what the cost is, until we sort of come back to the beginning of this,” Tory said at Thursday’s police board meeting.

The board heard a presentation on the results of a recent pilot project, which saw the installation of a full-body scanner at a downtown police division, in an attempt to reduce the number of strip searches conducted by Toronto police officers.

Instead of a person arrested having to undress and be inspected by an officer, in what is known as a “level-three search,” or more commonly a strip search, the full body scanner is used to detect metal, plastic and other items outside or hidden inside a body thanks to x-ray technology.

After a six-month pilot project that was a success among police and people who were scanned, the working group recommended that the service buy more scanners and install them in stations across the city.

Each unit costs at least $250,000, and there are annual fees and other possible costs associated.

Tory said he understood the intent of the technology — increasing the dignity of the searches and boosting the safety for all involved — but wanted to assess whether Toronto police were following established strip-search practices, including guidance offered by the Supreme Court in 2001.

That ruling stated strip searches are “inherently humiliating and degrading” and should not be done routinely, but only when there are reasonable grounds.

A recent report from the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, Ontario’s police watchdog, found that Toronto police conduct “far too many” strip searches — in about four out of 10 arrests made between 2014 and 2016.

According to the report, the rate is far higher than other comparable police services, including in Hamilton and Ottawa, where strip searches occur in less than one per cent of arrests.

“Probably the first thing we should look at, given the number of times this has been raised over the years at the board, is first look at whether we really have the number of level-three searches … down to where it should be consistent with the well established case law in the country,” said Tory.

The board passed a motion asking for Chief Mark Saunders to report back to it next year on why Toronto police conduct more strip searches than other jurisdictions.

It also wants to know whether officers are following the force’s own procedures on strip searches, including that they do a full pat-down before they moving to a strip search.

Addressing the high rate of strip searches, Saunders said “the simple answer” why Toronto is different is because “we deal with different communities.”

“We are the only city in Ontario that has three supervised injection sites. We have issues when it comes to some of the people that we do come across within the drug subculture, secreting evidence; secreting drugs is very common,” he told the board.

Asked whether he thought Toronto’s strip search rate was too high, Saunders told reporters that he was more concerned about whether the officers are “lawful in what we’re doing … because if that’s not the case, then we need to correct that.”

In a deputation to the board, former Toronto mayor John Sewell, now with the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, asked why police would even consider investing in more body scanners without first addressing the high rate of strip searches, something his organization has been challenging for years.

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“When you look at what we need to spend on, it’s not on body scanners,” he said. “It’s on putting money into youth programs, that’s how we are actually going to get ahead.”

Saunders’ report to the board is due in March.

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