Toronto Police’s carding reform is built on a good foundation

Marcus Gee’s take on the reforms to carding practices:

Chief Blair said on Friday that he doesn’t want his officers just hanging around the station “waiting for a radio call to say some catastrophe’s happened” then going out to put yellow tape around the scene. Instead, he wants his officers to hit the streets to make contact with the public, build trust with the community and gather information that might help solve or prevent crimes. That is the essence of community policing, now in use by many police forces around the world.

The compromise struck by the board and the chief is an attempt to come up with a policy that would let police continue to have their interactions with the public but at the same time ensure that people they encounter don’t feel harassed or singled out because of their race.

To that end, police officers are to be explicitly prohibited from using “race, place of origin, age, colour, ethnic origin, gender identity or gender expression in deciding whether to initiate a community engagement” (unless such factors form part of “a specific suspect, victim or witness description.”) On top of that, they will be told to weigh the value of any engagement against an “individual’s right to be left alone” and to consider the issue of “psychological detention” – a person’s perception that he or she has no choice but to comply with police.

Chief Blair promises that the force will train officers in how to conduct engagements with the public respectfully and within the law; that it will report to the board regularly on the engagement policy; that it will refrain from imposing carding quotas on officers; and that it will take care not to gather or keep masses of irrelevant data.

None of this will be enough for many of the activists, human-rights organizations and community groups that have besieged the board over the carding issue. They don’t like the fact that officers will be able to initiate contact and gather information as long as there is a “valid public safety purpose,” a pretty broad authorization. They don’t like the fact that police will not be required to issue a receipt to those it contacts (instead, officers will have business cards they can hand out) or inform people whom they stop that they have the right to walk away. But the settlement announced on Friday is not a final policy, and its principles form a good foundation.

Toronto Police’s carding reform is built on a good foundation – The Globe and Mail.