TTC’s use of ‘field information’ cards has risen steadily
The Star is investigating how information is collected from transit users. Transit officers filled out 445 cards with riders’ personal info in 2012, and 10,000 last year
TTC officers are collecting personal information from an increasing number of transit users each year, according to an ongoing Star investigation. Numbers provided by the agency show that in the first 11 months of last year, fare inspectors and enforcement officers completed more than 10,000 “field information” cards for people they encountered on the transit system.
That was up from just fewer than 8,000 in all of 2017, and just fewer than 5,000 in 2016.
The number has been on the rise every year since 2012, when officers filled out just 445 of the cards.
TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said the trend correlates to changes in the number of transit officers the agency has deployed over the years.
In 2011, TTC enforcement officers lost their special constable status, which had granted them limited police powers through an agreement with the Toronto Police Services Board.
As a result, the transit agency reduced its complement of officers from roughly 120 to fewer than 50, and the Toronto police created their own transit unit to patrol the system.
TTC officers used cards police had scrapped
TTC enforcement officers regained the special constable status in 2014, however, and the transit agency has been gradually hiring more officers since. The agency also introduced the new position of fare inspector around that time. Inspectors are tasked with enforcing payment rules but aren’t special constables.
This year, the TTC says it’s planning for an enforcement complement of 226 officers, up from 159 in 2018.
As the Star has reported, for years the TTC has quietly maintained a database that includes the personal information of thousands of transit users not charged with an offence.
The transit agency says its fare inspectors and enforcement officers collect the information — which can include details such as a person’s name, address, driver’s licence number and race — on field information cards only in cases where they have reason to believe the person committed an offence, but they decided to let the subject off with a warning instead of a ticket.
The subject isn’t given a copy of the card, which means they have no official record of the interaction or what information the TTC has on them. The TTC says its data is kept on file for 20 years, in accordance with city bylaws.
Between January 2008 and December 2018, TTC officers filled out more than 40,000 of the cards, according to data the Star obtained through a freedom of information request. Of those, roughly 33,000 listed the person’s race.
In more than 19 per cent of those cases, the cards listed the person as Black. Black residents make up only about 8.9 per cent of Toronto’s population, according to the 2016 census.
The majority of cards in which race was listed, or about 56 per cent, identified the subject as white. That’s slightly higher than the 49 per cent of Toronto’s population that is white.
About 12 per cent of the cards listed the transit user as Asian, in line with the 13 per cent of Torontonians who identify as from that group.
South Asians make up 14 per cent of Toronto’s population, but were listed on just 5 per cent of the cards. It’s not clear why the disparity with that group is so large.
According to the TTC, officers will use their best judgment to list a person’s race if the subject doesn’t say which race they identify as.
The TTC doesn’t keep race-based statistics on its ridership, but according to the census the Toronto population that commutes by public transit is about 43 per cent white, 14 per cent South Asian, 11 per cent Asian, and 11 per cent Black. Those figures don’t include noncommuting trips, and do include journeys on other transit agencies such as GO.
The portion of cards on which officers didn’t record the person’s race rose and then fell over the course of the data set. In 2008, officers didn’t record race on about one quarter of the cards. That increased to about 36 per cent in 2012, before falling to about 18 per cent in 2018.
The collection of the data and the overrepresentation of Black residents in the statistics has led some experts to say the TTC’s use of field information cards raises concerns about privacy and potential racial profiling.
A representative from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association told the Star the practice appears similar to police carding or street checks, which disproportionately affected racialized groups.
The TTC and the union that represents transit officers reject that characterization, and assert the cards are filled out only in cases where officers believe someone had committed an offence on the transit system.
“The TTC has never conducted, nor does it conduct, random stops and checks of anyone,” Green said.
By far, the most common offence listed on the cards was fare evasion, which made up roughly 73 per cent of the nearly 42,000 cards.
That was followed by “misconduct,” which made up about 10 per cent. Green said the term is used to capture “dozens of very specific infractions primarily related to bad behaviour — spitting, obscenities, etc.”
Smoking and soliciting made up about 6 per cent and 5 per cent respectively. A single card listed theft.
The top five locations where officers stopped subjects were Spadina station, on-board vehicles, Union station, Broadview station and Bloor-Yonge station.
A single card was written out for a trespassing warning at “Lower Bay” station, the platform beneath the existing Bay stop that has been closed to public use since 1966.
Green said the locations where the most cards had been collected “are high traffic areas so it would follow there would be more reported instances of bylaw infractions that required investigation.”