Tactic of stopping and questioning people who are not suspected of any crime has been applied disproportionately to blacks, data shows.
RICHARD J. BRENNAN / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
Yasir Naqvi, Ontario’s minister of community safety and correctional services, said he planned to make random and arbitrary carding by police forces across Ontario illegal by the end of fall.
By: Wendy Gillis News reporter, Published on Wed Oct 28 2015
Police officers will no longer be able to arbitrarily stop people for questioning based on their appearance or the neighbourhood they live in, Ontario’s minister of community safety and correctional services said Wednesday.
Yasir Naqvi said police officers will also have to tell citizens that the stop is voluntary and that the person can walk away.
The officers will be required to provide a reason for stop, as well as documentation and information about complaint mechanism.
Ontario police forces will also have to report annually to their police boards about carding. Forces will not be allowed to have quota system.
The announcement came less than a week after Naqvi said he planned to make random and arbitrary carding by police forces across Ontario illegal by the end of fall.
Carding is a practice by which officers stop, question and document members of the public who are not suspected of a crime. A series of Toronto Star investigations have shown the practice is disproportionately applied to young black men.
The tactic has been criticized as discriminatory — as racial profiling by another name — for years in Toronto, and has come under fire in other cities across Ontario, including Brampton, Mississauga, London and Hamilton.
The provincial regulations come after a months-long review of street checks by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government announced last June. Naqvi’s ministry conducted a series of consultations throughout the province for community feedback, including a heating meeting in Toronto in August.
The feedback was clear, Naqvi said: There should be no tolerance for random stops by police.
“We have heard from the community that street checks, by definition, are arbitrary as well as discriminatory and therefore cannot be regulated; they must simply be ended. The province agrees that these types of stops must end,” Naqvi said last week.
Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash responded to Naqvi’s comments last week by saying: “Nothing that the minister has said clashes with what Chief (Mark) Saunders has said.”
The Toronto Police Service resisted its own board’s calls for stricter limits on carding until former chief Bill Blair suspended the practice earlier this year.
Mayor John Tory, who sits on the Toronto police board, initially stood by the practice, but changed his position on carding after facing public outrage.
Carding is a practice that involves officers stopping citizens and storing their details in a police database. Data show that in Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton and London, black individuals are more than three times as likely to be carded as whites.
Opponents of street checks have argued that the practice violates charter rights protecting citizens from unlawful search and seizure and detention, as well as some provisions of the Ontario Human Rights Code.
RICHARD J. BRENNAN / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
Yasir Naqvi, Ontario’s minister of community safety and correctional services, said he planned to make random and arbitrary carding by police forces across Ontario illegal by the end of fall.
By: Wendy Gillis News reporter, Published on Wed Oct 28 2015
Police officers will no longer be able to arbitrarily stop people for questioning based on their appearance or the neighbourhood they live in, Ontario’s minister of community safety and correctional services said Wednesday.
Yasir Naqvi said police officers will also have to tell citizens that the stop is voluntary and that the person can walk away.
The officers will be required to provide a reason for stop, as well as documentation and information about complaint mechanism.
Ontario police forces will also have to report annually to their police boards about carding. Forces will not be allowed to have quota system.
The announcement came less than a week after Naqvi said he planned to make random and arbitrary carding by police forces across Ontario illegal by the end of fall.
Carding is a practice by which officers stop, question and document members of the public who are not suspected of a crime. A series of Toronto Star investigations have shown the practice is disproportionately applied to young black men.
The tactic has been criticized as discriminatory — as racial profiling by another name — for years in Toronto, and has come under fire in other cities across Ontario, including Brampton, Mississauga, London and Hamilton.
The provincial regulations come after a months-long review of street checks by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government announced last June. Naqvi’s ministry conducted a series of consultations throughout the province for community feedback, including a heating meeting in Toronto in August.
The feedback was clear, Naqvi said: There should be no tolerance for random stops by police.
“We have heard from the community that street checks, by definition, are arbitrary as well as discriminatory and therefore cannot be regulated; they must simply be ended. The province agrees that these types of stops must end,” Naqvi said last week.
Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash responded to Naqvi’s comments last week by saying: “Nothing that the minister has said clashes with what Chief (Mark) Saunders has said.”
The Toronto Police Service resisted its own board’s calls for stricter limits on carding until former chief Bill Blair suspended the practice earlier this year.
Mayor John Tory, who sits on the Toronto police board, initially stood by the practice, but changed his position on carding after facing public outrage.
Carding is a practice that involves officers stopping citizens and storing their details in a police database. Data show that in Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton and London, black individuals are more than three times as likely to be carded as whites.
Opponents of street checks have argued that the practice violates charter rights protecting citizens from unlawful search and seizure and detention, as well as some provisions of the Ontario Human Rights Code.
