Toronto Mayor John Tory calls for end to carding – Toronto – CBC News

2015/06/09 Leave a comment

Quite a change from his earlier position (not a bad thing in itself to be flexible and respond to public pressure):

Tory said the issue has been among “the most personally agonizing” since he became mayor.

“After great personal reflection and many discussions … I concluded it was time to say, enough. It was time to acknowledge there is no real way to fix a practice which has come to be regarded as illegitimate, disrespectful and hurtful.

“It was better to start over.”

Tory said his discussions included a talk with journalist Desmond Cole, who recently wrote about his experiences with carding for Toronto Life.

Cole said he was “overjoyed” with the mayor’s move, but cautioned that more action is needed.

“This has been a long time coming,” Cole told reporters. “Now we have to make sure [Tory] and the police services board and Chief Mark Saunders follow-up on this announcement … so carding is actually ended. So we’ll wait and see.”

Toronto Mayor John Tory calls for end to carding – Toronto – CBC News.

Christie Blatchford’s take:

Carding aside, what’s interesting here is that as of last week, presumably shortly before he hopped that plane to Edmonton, Tory was proudly standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Toronto’s new police chief, Mark Saunders, in defending the practice — always with a view to reforming it and improving it, he said (as indeed does the chief) but defending it nonetheless, and seemingly with sincerity.

It was a brave, if politically dangerous, position to take, I thought, and reinforced the romantic notion I think I had of the new mayor. (Before running for mayor, he was the host of a radio show on Newstalk 1010, where I was a regular guest, and I came to like him very much, and still do.)

But he is a politician, after all, and one who after several unsuccessful forays in politics has landed in a job he absolutely loves and for which he seems tailor-made: He works like a dog, is out and about every weekend at this festival or that, and has been by most measures a pretty good mayor.

And politicians, perhaps particularly those who enjoy the work and relentless social contact it entails, don’t like being unloved.

The voices against carding were rising; nothing said that better than a press conference last week featuring all manner of former civic leaders (why, they ran the gamut from A to B, from Gordon Cressy to David Crombie) denouncing the practice. And the voices against it were also louder (the Star has made it a veritable campaign, with at least one of its columnists suggesting pretty directly that Tory was a racist for supporting carding) than any on the other side.

I suspect internal polling numbers told Tory this was not a fight he would win, and that his support, even for a reformed version of carding, might define his mayoralty. And it’s a more believable explanation than the revelation-in-a-taxi or the epiphany-on-the-streetcar.

Christie Blatchford: Epiphanies on playing the cards right

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Mark Saunders working to overcome ‘carding’ criticism

2015/05/29 Leave a comment

Saunders really is an impressive communicator, both in terms of the substance of what he says as well as the way he says it:

Chief Saunders also said that while he is committed to halting random police checks of citizens just going about their business, carding suspected gang members is vital to keeping the city safe. “If it’s done right, it protects people.”

To those who say that carding amounts to a form of racial profiling, targeting a disproportionate number of racial-minority residents, Toronto’s first black police chief said: “We’re not sending officers into areas because people are brown or black. We’re looking at the charts. We’re looking at where the violence is occurring and it’s about six per cent of the geographics of the city. And so we’re putting officers in there because that’s where the violent crimes are occurring.”

When critics respond that that amounts to racial profiling by demographics, “Well, I’m, like, going, ‘Can someone help me out here? Like, we’re getting all the problems but can someone give me a solution?’”

Still does not completely explain the weakness of the earlier report he was responsible for (Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders’s secret carding report) but situates carding within an evidence-based approach targeting areas with higher crime rates.

Mark Saunders working to overcome ‘carding’ criticism – The Globe and Mail.

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Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders’s secret carding report

2015/05/27 1 Comment

Unfortunately, The Star’s analysis appears more methodically sound than the internal police report:

The police analysis did not — as the Star has done in four analyses since 2010 — single out people with black and brown skin who had been carded, and compare those figures to the baseline populations for those groups in Toronto.

The police carding database divides people into four skin colours: white, black, brown and “other.” The police lumped all non-white groups together in determining there was no bias. The Star has used neighbourhood-level census data and police carding data to show that blacks in Toronto are more likely than whites to be carded in each of the city’s 70-plus patrol zones. To a lesser extent, the same was true for people with “brown” skin.

The Saunders report included a recommendation that the service react to “deliberate misinterpretation” of carding data by the Star and “misleading, inflammatory” stories. That did not happen.

Saunders, in his first press conference as chief-designate, referred to innocent people who get carded as “collateral damage.” He later admitted it was a poor choice of words, saying the “proper term should be the ‘social cost’ … in which members of the community do not feel that they are being treated with dignity and respect.”

Saunders has said he is open to making sure officers are not conducting “random” stops.

The Star sought comment from both Saunders and Sloly on the early “community engagement” report and on the context of the internal correspondence.

Instead, the service issued a two-page response crafted by the “PACER Team,” on behalf of Saunders. In it, the police say “we have adamantly opposed the (Star’s) analysis” and methodology since 2002 and “stand by” the criticisms of the Star made in Saunders’s secret 2012 report.

Police again criticized the Star’s use of census data, and again said contacts with the public “will never be in proportion to census figures.” The response reiterates a longstanding police statement that officers police where violent crime goes on.

Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders’s secret carding report | Toronto Star.

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Advising resistance to police’s carding efforts grows more tempting: James

2015/05/15 Leave a comment

Royson James on Toronto police carding and the recent court decision:

In awarding damages to a man stopped in Moss Park and beaten up by police after he refused to engage the officer, citing his right to walk about the street without police harassment, Superior Court Justice Frederick Myers wrote:

“One who is not being investigated for criminality is allowed to walk down the street on a cold night with his or her hands in the pockets and to tell the inquisitive police officers to get lost without being detained, searched, exposed to sub-zero temperatures, or assaulted.”

You think?

Judge Myers awarded the victim, Mutaz Elmardy, $27,000 in damages in the 2011 incident.

“That police officers shattered Mr. Elmardy’s feeling of the law strikes at the rule of law itself and requires condemnation by the court,” the judge wrote.

You, sir, are a credit to your profession.

The same cannot be said of our Mayor John Tory (open John Tory’s policard). Since his election, it seems like he has done everything to perpetuate this odious police practice — from manipulating the membership of the police board, to hiring a chief committed to carry on the controversial exercise.

Tory calls carding corrosive. He says the police board is reviewing it. Yet he wouldn’t demand basic police accountability: provide those carded with a receipt of the encounter and respectfully inform them of their right not to engage.

http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2015/05/13/advising-resistance-to-polices-carding-efforts-grows-more-tempting-james.html

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Toronto police chief won’t abolish controversial practice of carding: ‘There will be an increase in crime’

2015/05/01 Leave a comment

Dose of reality on levels of change to be expected given police will always want more information and data (earlier post on new policy Toronto Police’s carding reform is built on a good foundation):

Asked specifically what would happen if carding was banned, Saunders replied: “If we removed the ability of our officers to engage with the community, all I can tell you is it will put us in a situation where there will be an increase in crime.”

A new city policy on carding, adopted by the police services board in April, is subject to mandatory review after six months. The policy, which stripped away safeguards and restrictions proposed in an earlier draft, allows police to stop citizens without telling them they’re free to go unless they specifically ask. It also removes an earlier requirement for police to hand out receipts to anyone they card.

At the summit Wednesday, Mayor John Tory, who sits on the police services board, defended the process that led to the new policy.

“I completely accept the fact that the system as has been, the system which was in place, combined with inadequate framing, which I think is a major shortcoming we’ve had in the system, frequently produced unjust, discriminatory consequences for black young people in particular,” he said. But when he came into office five months ago, he added, there was effectively no carding policy at all.

“The policy we recently approved was not only the best we could do at that time, but it was better than no oversight, no policy and procedure,” he said.

As for what will happen after the six-month review, Saunders appeared to rule out at least one potential option.

“Abolishing it,” he said, ” is not the way in which we’re going to say ‘everything is going to be better.’”

Toronto police chief won’t abolish controversial practice of carding: ‘There will be an increase in crime’

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Why Mark Saunders is a ‘bittersweet’ appointment for Toronto’s black community

2015/04/27 Leave a comment

More on the appointment of Mark Saunders as the new police chief of Toronto:

Winnipeg Police Chief Devon Clunis, who became Canada’s first black police chief in 2012, disagrees. The Jamaican-born police-chaplain-turned-chief says his black identity features prominently in his leadership, and is a significant asset in a racially divided city.

Winnipeg is often the focus of national criticism for the high level of violence involving the city’s First Nations population; earlier this year, Maclean’s magazine said Winnipeg was “arguably Canada’s most racist city.”

Clunis believes his heritage allows him to identify with some of the challenges facing aboriginal residents.

“Cultural understanding is what you can help to build into your community as a chief of police, because you do have that perspective,” he said in an interview this week. “Sometimes it’s very difficult to understand something unless you’ve actually experienced or walked in that particular shoe yourself.”

Clunis, who knows Saunders well and calls him a “fantastic guy,” said he will bring to the job a greater understanding of the black community and what its members experience — “he understands what it means to walk in that skin as he goes up and down the street.”

Asked in 2011 if the homicide squad needed more black officers to help solve the high number of shooting deaths among black men, Saunders — then head of homicide and the only black officer in the unit — said it was not necessary. The colour of his skin did not give him an advantage, he said.

“When I walk into the room, I am a police officer first,” he said at the time.

Asked this week if he felt there was a heightened expectation he would be able to ease racial tensions in the city because he is black, Saunders gave an honest response. It is also one that should be promising, considering that his legion of supporters within the force all point to one major strength: the man listens.

“Being black is fantastic. It doesn’t give me superpowers,” he said. “What will happen is there will be lots of open dialogue, lots of talking. More so than ever before.”

Why Mark Saunders is a ‘bittersweet’ appointment for Toronto’s black community | Toronto Star.

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Blair urges officers to reach across cultural divisions in parting words as police chief

2015/04/25 Leave a comment

Despite all the controversies (G20, carding etc), good parting words on inclusion:

In his parting words as police chief, Bill Blair asked officers to reach across cultural divisions – including, perhaps, those that separate them from civilians.

“More than half the citizens of our city have chosen to come here,” Chief Blair, two days before ending his 10-year term, told hundreds of top-ranking Toronto Police Service officers at his retirement gala dinner on Thursday.

“The reason they’ve chosen to come here is because this is a place of inclusion,” he said. “It’s more than merely tolerance… it is an example to the world.”

Chief Blair was appointed in April 2005, the youngest-ever Toronto police chief at the time. After a career partly spent walking a beat in Regent Park, his term was marked by breaks with tradition. On the day of his appointment, he acknowledged publicly that racial profiling existed within the force. He went on to heavily recruit women and members of ethnic minorities.

Ten years later, Chief Blair is ending his policing career amid criticism related to racial profiling, as well as much praise over his wider work as chief. One of his last acts as chief was to negotiate future terms for a policy that has long angered Toronto’s black communities–“carding,” in which officers stop and question people who aren’t suspected of a crime.

He has said repeatedly that the practice, which many critics would like to see abolished, is a useful public safety tool.

But in Thursday’s speech, he also asked officers in general terms to understand others’ perspectives.

“Let us all be careful,” he said. “Let us be careful that we do not succumb to…those forces, that would divide us, those forces which would separate us, those forces that would make us afraid of each other.

“Let us always be careful to return to each other, to support each other, and to be that place of social cohesion and inclusion that we should all aspire to be,” he said. “Because that’s what makes the city of Toronto, the country of Canada, an extraordinary place.”

More should follow this example.

Blair urges officers to reach across cultural divisions in parting words as police chief – The Globe and Mail.

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Time for a new kind of black activism in Toronto

2015/04/23 Leave a comment

Interesting how the young activists feel that they are not recognized, welcomed or listened to by the current generation:

We are graduate students whose work, as well as experience, has made us acutely aware of the plights facing black youth within a society that privileges certain groups over others. We are aware that black youth are under-represented among post-secondary graduates and in the workforce, and overrepresented in the criminal justice system. And we are working alongside members of our community to address these issues. If the older generation of activists has not noticed our work or that of our cohorts it may because ours is, for our community, a new kind of more democratic activism.

Perhaps the most surprising comments in the Star article came from Valerie Steele, president of the Jamaican Diaspora Canada Foundation, whose work we greatly admire. She added her voice to the chorus lamenting the lack of young black leaders. But we had met with Steele before the article came out and explained to her our concern that too many black youth feel isolated and marginalized from the activist community. That too many of these older activists seem to fail to understand the needs and realities of black youth and in so doing actively stifle their voices.

It’s time for the current generation of activists to open the space for young voices, to democratically engage the youth they claim to champion. We strongly believe that the next generation of black leadership must work in concert with those who have slipped through the cracks or who are on the margins of society. Only then can we claim truly to represent our community.

As our antecedents have recognized, the only way to effect meaningful change is to have grassroots-level organizing. To this end, we have established the Jamaican Canadian Youth Council, a youth-led organization. We seek to establish ourselves as a supportive agent to empower, mobilize and motivate young people across Ontario to work collaboratively toward creating programs to generate change.

We know this can work because we’ve seen it happen. Contrary to what the older generation of activists is saying, there is an impressive group of emerging leaders who not only work for the community’s marginalized youth, but with them.

Time for a new kind of black activism in Toronto | Toronto Star.

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Toronto: The Downton Abbey of Canada?

2015/04/21 2 Comments

More on the working poor in Toronto (great media line):

“Canada’s two richest cities are becoming giant modern-day Downton Abbeys where a well-to-do knowledge class relies on a large cadre of working poor who pour their coffee, serve their food, clean their offices, and relay their messages from one office to another,” it says, referring to the popular British TV drama about an aristocratic family and their servants.

Knowledge workers include senior managers and professionals in business, finance, government, law, education, health care, media, arts, sports and entertainment.

The report is an update of Stapleton’s landmark 2012 research, which showed Toronto’s working poor grew by a staggering 42 per cent in the first five years of the millennium. (Although this earlier work was based on the long-form census, which no longer exists, Stapleton has used Statistics Canada tax filer data to replicate his 2012 findings and inform his latest report.)

He defines the working poor as non-students between the ages of 18 and 65, living independently, earning more than $3,000 but less than the low income measure (LIM), defined as 50 per cent of the median income.

By that measure, a single person in 2011 with annual earnings of less than $19,930, after taxes and government transfers, was considered working poor. In today’s dollars, it would be about $20,800. For a family of four, it would be just over $41,600.

The “good news,” Stapleton says, is that the rate of increase in working poverty in Toronto has slowed from a decade ago.

But despite an improving economy, increases to the minimum wage and new income supports such as the federal Working Income Tax Benefit, Universal Child Care Benefit and Ontario Child Benefit, working poverty in the city continues to climb.

In the city of Toronto, where almost 11 per cent, or 142,000 adults, are living in working poor households, working poverty is concentrated in the inner suburbs of North York (13 per cent) Scarborough (12 per cent) and York (10 per cent).

It has also begun to spill into York and Peel regions where the cities of Markham and Brampton lead with working poverty rates of 10.2 per cent and 9.6 per cent respectively, according to the report.

“For the first time, working poverty is growing faster in the outer suburbs like Markham, Brampton and Richmond Hill compared to south of Steeles Ave.,” Stapleton says. It grew in Markham by 26 per cent, in Brampton by 22 per cent and in Richmond Hill by 21 per cent, he notes.

Although more research is needed to fully explain this phenomenon, Stapleton suspects it is largely because housing in the city of Toronto is becoming too expensive for low-wage workers.

Needless to say, given Toronto’s diversity, this correlates with visible minorities (median incomes of first generation and many second generation immigrants are lower than non-visible minorities).

Toronto: The Downton Abbey of Canada? | Toronto Star.

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Why Toronto’s police board caved on carding — and why the battle isn’t over: James | Toronto Star

2015/04/15 Leave a comment

More on the Toronto Police carding compromise and the ongoing debate (see earlier Toronto Police’s carding reform is built on a good foundation):

But the compromise, brokered by a retired judge, leaves them untouched, prompting critics to charge that Mukherjee has sold out.

After a year of back-and-forth, Blair’s position has not moved, Mukherjee said. Blair feels that to define what is a “public safety reason” for carding is to limit the police. The board’s vote has no effect if the chief does not interpret the vote by writing operational commands that the rank and file must follow.

Meanwhile, community pressure has mounted as complaints pointed to statistics that showed black and brown citizens were four times more likely to be carded than whites.

“We were getting nowhere,” said Mukherjee. “There was a standoff. We were at an impasse.”

Mukherjee said the board, the civilian authority over the force, had only one option, other than compromise: charge the chief with insubordination.

When the board failed to do that last September, the moment passed. To try that in January, a few months before Blair was set to retire, would have been suicidal.

“If the board declared the chief insubordinate, then the matter would go to a tribunal and it would be stuck there for several years, with the carding matter remaining unresolved.

“I’m a practical man. Nobody wants to go to war with the chief.”

So, Mukherjee concluded he would accept an approach that, he says, achieves 90 per cent of the goal — and pursue the rest under a new chief that could be announced as early as Friday. Blair retires at the end of the month.

Mukherjee says he understands the disappointment and the criticism of citizens who’ve clamored for reforms and were on the verge of receiving them when the police board approved the new carding procedures last year.

He admits the board understands that the proposal mediated by retired judge Warren Winkler is “very different from the 2014 proposal.”

But full reforms were not going to happen under Blair, who was prepared to go only so far.

On Thursday, the board could make a few tweaks on three items, to signal it is listening to concerns.

New rules might say police “shall” (not, may) give citizens a business card following carding interactions. Secondly, if a citizen asks the police for clarity on whether they are being detained or are free to leave and not answer questions, the police must provide that information. And the chief is to provide clear criteria for eliminating historical data in police files.

Still, “the ground has shifted. The board and the new chief will take us to the next level,” he says.

Mukherjee, 69, has been on the board for 10 years. His term ends a year from now, and he won’t seek reappointment. This is his last year as chair, ending in December. His successor is expected to come from a city of Toronto appointee, to be named in the coming months, who replaces Andy Pringle, a board member whose term ended last November.

Distrust started building among police watchers following a flurry of changes on a board that had finally developed solidarity around policing reforms.

In quick succession, John Tory was elected mayor and took a seat on the board. Tory replaced Councillors Michael Thompson and Frances Nunziata with Shelley Carroll  and Chin Lee. Former councillor Mike Del Grande left city hall for the school board. The entire board dynamic changed. And, before long, carding reforms developed over two years were set aside with a compromise that critics say gutted the proposal.

At the last police board meeting April 2, where the compromise position was panned by every citizen and group appearing before the board, one speaker wondered if Mukherjee had been kidnapped, zapped, and had a brain transplant.

“I haven’t been zapped, no.”

“The new chief needs some breathing room. To drop the carding bombshell at his door, essentially untouched and without any progress, would be crippling, he said.

Mukherjee said he and the board faced a “practical dilemma.” In trying to accomplish “one of the most significant things the Toronto Police Services Board will do,” the board ran into a brick wall, with no palatable options.

Why Toronto’s police board caved on carding — and why the battle isn’t over: James | Toronto Star.

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