Law student launches constitutional challenge
Man who says he has been stopped 30 times says police have no right to retain personal information
A constitutional challenge to the “corrosive” practice of carding by Toronto police is being launched by Toronto resident Knia Singh, who says he has been stopped about 30 times by police and documented in more than eight encounters.
Singh’s lawyer, Vilko Zbogar, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Divisional Court against the Toronto Police Services Board and Chief Mark Saunders, alleging the information recorded by officers during the “arbitrary” stops is a breach of charter rights.
The challenge is a “test case,” an individual application for a judicial review.
A panel of judges in Divisional Court will hear evidence and rule on whether the force has the right to retain the personal information — some of it subjective — that is recorded by police during contacts with pedestrians in non-criminal encounters. Similar information can be filled out on drivers.
“The legal focus of the charter application is the retention of personal information in a police data bank,” said Zbogar, who expects a ruling could come within a year, a much shorter period than would be involved in a class-action lawsuit.
“The databank is the engine that drives carding,” said Zbogar. “Of course, stopping the police from being able to amass people’s personal information in a data bank does not mean that police harassment will stop altogether, but it would at least get rid of one government-sanctioned pretence for illegal, arbitrary stops.”
A court ruling in Singh’s favour would compel police to abide by the law, said Zbogar, who is doing the legal work for free.
Meaghan Gray, a spokeswoman for Toronto police, confirmed the service had received the court application, but said she wouldn’t comment on a matter before the court.
“I can also tell you that as we wait for further direction from our board, Chief Saunders continues to meet with those interested in finding solutions to issues of mutual concern, and our officers are continuing to do all they can to keep our communities safe,” said Gray.
Carding has been suspended since January as then police chief Bill Blair, and now Saunders, worked toward creating procedures to enact a community engagement — or carding — policy passed by the police board in April.
The policy was widely criticized for eliminating the rights-based language of an earlier document that basically restricted carding to criminal investigations and required police to tell individuals as much as possible about why they were stopping them.
On Sunday, Mayor John Tory said that carding has created such a “toxic” situation between police and community members that he would call for a “permanent cancellation” of carding at the next police board meeting June 18.
But the power of the board may not extend to the cancellation of carding, which has been in practice for decades and is supported by Saunders.
On Wednesday, board chair Alok Mukherjee said in an email that the “board can do what it wishes with its policies; it has no power to suspend a service procedure.”
“That’s established by the chief to direct operations. In a good working relationship, the board and the chief will work hand in hand to develop policy and procedure.”
Singh, a law student and the chair of the Caribana Arts Group, did a freedom of information request to the Toronto Police Service and obtained 50 pages of personal data recorded by police.
Most of the data resulted from traffic stops where officers filled out contact cards — formerly called 208s — with his personal information, or entered the data directly in an in-car computer database as a Field Information Report.
During one traffic stop, police described the clothing Singh was wearing — blue jeans, white sneakers and blue hoodie. In another, police wrote down details of his parking fines and that he had an expired licence sticker. His height varied, according to the contact card, as did his nationality, which was documented as Jamaican even though Singh was born in Canada.
In another encounter, Singh — who was featured in a Star investigation into carding — says an officer driving in the opposite direction turned his cruiser around to follow Singh into the parking lot of a friend’s apartment.
The contact card for that encounter, during which Singh challenged the reason for the stop, says that he is “not police friendly.”
“Stopping the police from being able to amass people’s personal information in a data bank does not mean police harassment will stop altogether, but it would at least get rid of one government-sanctioned pretence for illegal, arbitrary stops.”
VILKO ZBOGAR
LAWYER FOR KNIA SINGH