Police carding should be abolished

Re: Rights and public safety collide in the debate on street checks and ‘carding’, Aug. 23.

In recent months the issue of carding or “street checks” by police has come under fire. Like many critics I have pointed out that the carding of citizens is not only discriminatory but a violation of the doctrine of the presumption of innocence. The Ottawa Police Services Board failed to address this issue when I first raised it with them back in 2012.

Police chiefs in both Toronto and Ottawa have defended the practice claiming that it provides them with useful information in solving crimes. The fact is that there is no empirical evidence that carding solves crime. An examination of the data provided by Statistics Canada shows that there is no correlation between carding rates and clearance rates.

If carding helps solve crime one would expect that those jurisdictions with the highest carding rates would also have the highest clearance rates. However this is not the case. When compared to 17 police agencies in cities that have a population over 100,000 the Ottawa Police Service has one of the lowest clearance rates occupying 13th place in the rankings. Figures over the past two years show that the OPS has carded more than 4,000 people in the city. So exactly how many of these carding incidents lead to crimes being cleared by a charge?

Carding is a discriminatory practice that does not reduce crime or improve the level of trust between the police and the community. Unless it is shown empirically to solve crime and is carefully regulated by law carding by police agencies should be abolished by the Ontario government. Darryl T. Davies, Criminologist, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University