Skip carding; focus on traffic safety

Re: Rights and public safety collide in the debate on street checks and ‘carding’, Aug. 24.

As columnist Kelly Egan observed, it is unfortunate that more “ordinary people” did not attend the meeting with respect to the police practice known as “carding.” However, people cannot attend meetings they do not know about.

Carding is often illegal. An action can be illegal without being a crime (a civil wrong, for example).

There is nothing remotely suspicious about walking down a street, driving a car safely, or being a passenger in an automobile. When the police force someone to stop their vehicle and insist that the driver and passengers identify themselves, that is at least a civil wrong. Similarly, if the police approach pedestrians and insist that they identify themselves and produce identification but do not take “no” for an answer, those actions are unlawful.

People who care about public safety should keep in mind that history’s greatest crimes have been committed by those in authority. In a democracy, police officers are public servants hired to protect our rights, not water them down.

I would challenge the notion that information gathered by carding is of much use. I daresay that Police Chief Charles Bordeleau would be hard-pressed to find more than one or two cases where this kind of information was even of peripheral value in solving a serious crime. We would be much better served if the time and energy spent “carding” was used trying to improve traffic safety, which really does affect law-abiding citizens. I would also urge that friendly approaches, such as Chief Bordeleau describes, are far likelier to provide useful information than does carding, which breeds understandable resentment. Bruce F. Simpson, Ottawa