Call for review of police race-based data

By Gerald V. Paul

As Chief Bill Blair released Toronto force’s hot spot maps to show the public how controversial ‘carding’ data is used to focus policing efforts, the chair of the Toronto Police Services Board is calling for an independent review of police contacts with citizens, particularly youth from different ethnic and racial backgrounds.

Critics called it a list a “no walk” list for young black men.

Overall in Toronto, the number of individual young black men, aged 15 to 24, who were “carded” – stopped and documented by police - between 2008 and mid 2011 was 3.4 times greater than the city’s population of young black men.

Most have done nothing wrong.

“The issue of police contacts with members of the community, in general, and racialized young people specifically is one significant and long-standing public concern,” TPSB’s Dr. Chair Dr. Alok Mukherjee wrote in his recommendation, made public Thursday in the police board agenda.

He cited “widespread public concern” about the nature police contacts with “racialized” citizens.

Mukherjee also referenced the 2008 report by former Ontario Chief Justice Roy McMurtry and former legislative Speaker Alvin Curling that probed the roots of youth violence as reasons to look deeper.

However, Blair insists police are police are targeting violent crime areas and that documenting people who move about those areas is good police work.

Officers stop and question people and document who they are with Field Information Report cards. Personal details, including physical descriptions, are then entered into a huge database, which officers can search later in the aftermath of crimes. More than a million individuals have been documented in the past three years, the number of cards filled out jumped 18 per cent between 2008 and 2011.

But police say the database is a valuable investigative tool that provides leads on witnesses and suspects.

Blair, who has made improvements in the racial makeup of the service and is widely seen as a police role model for race relations, has acknowledged since becoming Chief in 2005 that racial bias is a reality in policing.