The Star’s view: Stop bias in carding,
In Toronto, police stop, question, document — and often search — a disproportionate number of black people in a controversial practice called “carding.” And despite the years of criticism that police are racially profiling blacks, and to a lesser extent people with “brown” skin, the practice has never abated. That’s a shame.
An ongoing investigation into racial profiling by the Star’s Jim Rankin and Patty Winsa shows a steady rise in the number of people of colour documented on “contact cards” by cops between 2008 and 2012. The problematic trend continues, despite numerous promises by Chief Bill Blair to do better.
There’s nothing wrong with police collecting appropriate racebased statistics that can expose systemic biases and ultimately improve the way officers do their jobs. That’s good for policing and the community.
But after years of police promises to do better, thereby avoiding the scrutiny of Toronto’s Auditor General, the problems with carding cannot continue. Police say they intend to announce sweeping changes to the system soon. But given the lack of action so far, it’s fair to demand that any reforms provide measurable and transparent results. At this point, nothing less is acceptable.
Toronto Police Services Board chair Alok Mukherjee is right to voice his dismay at the story the Star has once again exposed. “Shocking” and “devastated” was his reaction to the lack of change.
The data’s pattern, Mukherjee says, is “totally unacceptable and shakes my confidence in the effectiveness of everything that we have been told repeatedly the (police service) was doing to deal with issues of diversity, human rights and bias-free policing.” In other words, the board got bamboozled — and it’s time for it to assert its authority in this area.
Certainly, changes must be made to stop what can only be described as an unseemly practice of linking the number of people that cops card during each shift to future promotions and raises. The possibility that people, the majority of whom have dark skin, are stopped and documented so that a police officer can jump to the next pay grade is unconscionable.
Another issue the Star’s analysis uncovered involves a small number of officers who repeatedly stop people with specific skin colours. That doesn’t mean these officers are biased, but if police actually analyzed their massive carding database, they could track the identity of those cops and ask hard questions.
In management jargon this practice is called “internal benchmarking,” and as University of South Florida criminologist Lorie Fridell says, it helps management keep an eye on officers, asking the basic question of “what’s going on here?”
Police are doing some analysis on their data because they now report that carding actually decreased by 25 per cent in the first six months of 2013, although it’s unclear if that is related to a drop in contacts with people of colour.
It’s positive, then, to hear police say their incoming changes will adopt the internal benchmarking system. We’ll see how that works out. The sooner it is implemented and put to good use, the better.
There’s no room for inaction. Indeed, the repeated stops imposed on some young men are needlessly destructive. Knia Singh, a law student who is black, filed a freedom of information request for his contact cards and received more than 50 pages of data compiled by police, some through traffic stops. “I’ve never been arrested but yet I have a file this thick in a Toronto police database on me,” Singh said.
Blair’s promised changes had better be good. And the police services board must use its oversight to make sure that this time the transformation is real. Only deeds speak.