Carding must be ended in deed, not just in words. Royson James,
Knia Singh has told his story many times to the police services board, the mayor, the police chief, the media and anyone who would listen to his tale of being carded by Toronto police multiple times.
Now, the last-year law student and father of two wants to tell it to a judge and have the practice declared illegal and a breach of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, guaranteeing equality before the law.
Singh’s lawyer filed papers in court Wednesday seeking a judicial review before the divisional court. The document names new police chief Mark Saunders and police services board chair Alok Mukherjee as respondents.
In essence, Singh claims he has no criminal record and was never stopped or investigated as a suspect in a crime. Yet, police targeted him numerous times, he says, because he is black. And this “racial profiling” has left him, a Canadian citizen born in Toronto, “feeling like a second-class citizen,” and is “an affront to his dignity.”
Information collected from him, involuntarily, has been stored in a police database — even though he says some of it is patently false, and has the potential to negatively impact his life.
Singh and his lawyer welcome Mayor John Tory’s aboutface on the issue and the mayor’s call to end carding. But the mayor’s repentance comes too late. And there is no guarantee it will pass muster at the police board. Neither is there a guarantee that what the mayor sees as an “end to carding” will, in fact, terminate the practice.
“The police board had ample opportunity to end carding,” said lawyer Vilko Zbogar at a news conference Wednesday at city hall.
“The board let us down. The chief let us down. We can’t leave carding to political discretion; to police bureaucracy.”
The legal challenge is only one of several efforts being planned across the city to keep pressure on the police board to cripple the effects of carding.
The group of prominent citizens and civic leaders who seemingly shocked Tory into surrender last week is planning followup events to back up their demands.
Other community groups plan protest action, including a day to “red card” Bay Street workers so they get a taste of what black and brown Torontonians regularly endure at the hands of police.
Why the continued advocacy when Tory and board chair Mukherjee say they’ll back a motion June 18 to end the practice? Because, saying it doesn’t make it so. In April 2014, the police board directed then-chief Bill Blair to proactively tell citizens of their rights not to stop and engage police on such fishing expeditions. The board said when a person agrees, police should give the citizen a receipt of the encounter (like a traffic ticket outlining an offence). It also directed the chief to draft a definition for rank and file officers that tells them the “public safety reasons” appropriate for them to attempt to card citizens.
Blair balked and the issue has deteriorated into a political crisis.
While Tory says he wants to end carding he’s not clear on demanding the protections that the board inserted in 2014 — protections that cover occasions when police feel they need to elicit information from citizens. (All of the above relates to non-criminal investigations or times when police suspect a citizen is at risk of potential criminality.)
Specifically, Tory came to the police board last December with a view on the issue that runs counter to the reforms. Instead of demanding Blair comply with the board’s vote, Tory tried various ways to get a compromise.
The one he agreed to did not protect the rights of citizens and did not contemplate a receipt; nor did it require the chief to define the public safety reason for carding.
Without those protections, carding will be ended in words, not in deed. The practice would go underground, with no way to monitor police practice.
And like a dandelion with its shoot lopped off, its root would spring to life again, as virulent as before. Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. rjames@thestar.ca