We asked: What is it like being ‘carded’ by police?
New data shows that indigenous and black people are more likely to be the subjects of street checks — the controversial police practice also known as carding.
Activist groups including Black Lives Matter say the practice amounts to profiling, after obtaining data from the Edmonton Police Service about the racial background of those stopped and questioned by officers without grounds for arrest.
Alberta Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley called the numbers “troubling.”
The Journal spoke to four Edmontonians who have been street checked about the experience and how it influenced their views on law enforcement.
Aaron Paquette, a Cree and Métis man running for city council in Ward 4, said as a young man he was stopped by police so many times he lost count.
Usually, he would be walking down the street when police would flash their lights, take him aside and ask for his identification.
He said was an “obedient” young person who complied with police. But looking back, he’s bothered by the experience.
“It was almost the casualness about it that was maybe the worst part,” he said.
“We should not feel casual about asking people for their papers.”
He thinks Edmonton police can still do community-based policing without street checks.
“I support the EPS in every way,” he said.
“But I think in this situation, on this issue, I think it needs to stop. I don’t think you need to ask people for their identification to have a conversation with them.”
Teresa Strong spent almost two decades involved with gangs and drugs in Edmonton.
Now she’s 13-years sober and a case manager with the Distinctive Employment Counselling Services of Alberta (DECSA) — a turnaround she credits in part to street checks.
“When you’re in that transient lifestyle, you don’t keep in touch with family or anything. For myself, I was with gangs all the time and in and out of jail, so my family wouldn’t even know if I was dead or alive.”
“So I like that the police always checked on me,” said Strong, who identifies as white and Métis. “I was in the system.”
Some of the time, she was stopped and street checked without grounds.
But she was also selling drugs, on warrants and engaged in other activity that would give police officers grounds to arrest or detain her.
In 2015, Strong spoke at an Edmonton police news conference to explain the practice of carding.
“For someone that’s come out of that life and works with the police now, I have a different outlook,” she said.
Patti Howell, also with DECSA, spent years living on the street as a sex worker, particularly along 118 Avenue.
She said she was carded many times simply for appearing homeless.
“At the time I probably wasn’t terribly happy about it,” she said. “Although I’m not clearly white, I am white, so I didn’t feel like I was being profiled or anything like that.
“I feel like they harassed my indigenous sisters on the street more than they ever harassed me,” she added.
“By harassing, I mean ‘Whatcha doing? Where you going? How’s things? Blah blah blah’.”
She’s concerned about the carding of people in the Ice District, which she said is driving lowincome people out of the neighbourhood.
Magan Muhumed with the Ogaden Somali Community of Alberta Society said he was carded while crossing the street after a meeting at the society’s 111 Avenue office late last year.
The officers said he was jaywalking. But he is convinced that he was not.
He felt the stop was about collecting his information.
He said he was also carded as a youth while living in Toronto.
Sahra Hashi, of the Somali Canadian Women and Children’s Association, said she regularly hears from mothers whose children have been stopped by the police.
“We know most of the people they’re stopping and carding, they’re not involved with criminal activity,” she said.
“Police are collecting their data, people who are not having any problems at all, and that bothers the community.”
I think it needs to stop. I don’t think you need to ask people for their identification to have a conversation with them.