Even when it works carding has a PR problem, report finds
The Edmonton Police Commission on Wednesday released the first independent report on how city police carry out street checks — the controversial practice also known as carding.
The 306-report said there should be tweaks to how police handle street checks, but steered clear of recommending the practice be banned or restricted as was done in Ontario.
Here are some take-aways from the report:
What’s a street check?
Simon Fraser University criminologist Curt Griffiths, who authored the report, found there is a lot confusion about what constitutes a street check.
In Edmonton, a police street check generally involves police stopping someone to collect personal information that is then stored and used for a number of purposes — including criminal and missing persons investigations and identifying people in cases of death.
A key distinction from other police interactions is that the person stopped is not suspected of a crime.
“Psychological” detention during street checks — where a person stopped by police feels they have no choice but to stay despite not being detained — is a concern, Griffiths noted.
The local data on street checks isn’t very good ...
Black Lives Matter Edmonton set off the local carding debate last year after releasing an analysis showing black and Indigenous Edmontonians were disproportionately stopped in street checks.
The analysis was based on freedom of information data on street checks, which in some cases contained racial information on the people stopped.
But Griffiths said due to the quality of that data — which contained subjective judgments by officers about a person’s race as well as thousands of police interactions that weren’t actually street checks — it wasn’t possible to reach that conclusion.
He also said it’s wrong to compare the race listed on street check reports to the city’s residential population of that race. Rather, it should be compared to the “available” population — in other words, people on the street at the time of the check.
... but that doesn’t mean racial profiling isn’t a factor
Griffiths noted that doesn’t mean racial profiling doesn’t happen — full stop — in street checks.
“Given that (street check reports) represent the outcome of the decision of an officer to conduct a stop and provide only an abbreviated record of the encounter, it is very difficult from an analysis of these data to empirically determine whether the EPS engages in racial profiling and biased policing,” he wrote.
Street checks solved crimes — at least in 14 cases
During Edmonton’s carding debate, police made much of the street check’s utility as a policing tool. Opponents doubted that street checks themselves were a valuable crime-fighting technique.
Researchers cited 14 specific cases that were closed thanks to information from a street check report. Perhaps the most dramatic: police were able to find a murder suspect by pulling up a 2015 street check report on the victim. The report noted she was homeless and trying to get into assisted living to avoid an “associate” on that street. That associate was later convicted in her killing and sentenced to life in prison.
Griffiths said banning street checks would create a number of problems and would not in itself improve relations between diverse communities and the EPS. Street checks used to be a performance measure
While the practice of using street checks as a performance measure has been discontinued, Edmonton police used to be judged on how many they carried out.
Griffiths quoted officers who said higher ups were pushing them to do more and more checks. They were a measure of good policing.
Another said officers used to have to meet minimum street check totals.
Another said the number of street checks they carried out got them into the elite gang unit.
Yet another said superiors used to hand out coffee cards in street check competitions.
Police think the media got the carding story wrong
The Griffiths report makes clear officers weren’t happy with how the carding story was reported.
One officer told researchers that “the media was ‘poisoning ’ what we do. Moms still tell kids if they ’re bad police will come and take them away.”
Others said the public wasn’t clear on what street checks actually are. “Police know what a street check is. The public may not, except for small, loud groups saying street checks are biased policing. People love sensationalism and then the innuendoes start.”
Street checks have a perception problem
The report allowed that while it’s not possible to conclude widespread racial profiling based on the street check data, there are problems with how street checks are perceived.
“While statistical analyses of street check data may reveal no evidence of racial profiling or biased policing, if persons in communities of diversity perceive they are profiled and unfairly targeted for street checks, this is an important finding that must be addressed,” the report notes. “For most persons, perception is reality.”