Chief insists carding data must remain
Mark Saunders says force can’t destroy info for legal reasons
The details of hundreds of thousands of citizens contained in the Toronto police carding database can’t be purged because of legal reasons, according to Chief Mark Saunders.
The chief told the CBC in a radio interview Thursday morning that the data had to be retained.
Toronto police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray said later that the service’s legal counsel advised Saunders that retaining the data for future prosecutions was required under the Police Services Act. The information could also be necessary for use in civil proceedings or in complaints against officers, said Gray, citing other examples.
“It would be inappropriate to destroy potentially relevant evidence,” said Gray.
Instead of daily access to the carding data, which officers currently have, Gray said the “chief’s view is that there would only be access to previously collected information in the most exceptional cases.”
So far, since being named as chief, Saunders has made the rounds of news outlets, telling the Globe and Mail, and now CBC, that he plans to reform carding. Saunders has not agreed to an interview with the Star.
Brian Beamish, the province’s privacy commissioner, says there is no privacy legislation that prevents the destruction of the data collected by Toronto police, especially in light of an acknowledgement by the force that the bulk of the stops have been random.
“It is not enough to say information may be relevant at some point in the future,” said Beamish in an email to the Star. “The information should be securely destroyed as soon as it is no longer needed for accountability-related purposes.”
Between 2008 and 2012, police filled out 1.8 million contact cards, involving more than a million individuals, in stops that typically resulted in no arrest or charge, according to a Star investigation.
The Star has used neighbourhood-level census data and police-carding data to show that blacks in Toronto are more likely than whites to be carded in each of the city’s 70-plus patrol zones. To a lesser extent, the same was true for people with brown skin.
“The Toronto Police Service has acknowledged that it over-collected personal information in its carding program,” said Beamish.
“Police should not retain personal information they were not entitled to collect in the first place.”
An internal report by Mark Saunders defending carding, written before he became chief, acknowledges that less than one in 10 cardings are the result of “intelligence-led policing.”
“Privacy legislation does not prevent the destruction of personal information,” said Beamish. “Police may retain personal information to fulfil their mandate, ensure accountability and allow people to access their own information.
“However, once these purposes have been accomplished, personal information can and should be destroyed.”
The privacy commissioner said his office is ready to work with Saunders to identify what records should be “destroyed immediately and set the time frame for the destruction of the remainder of the information.”
The Saunders interview with CBC came on the same day as the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s annual report, in which interim head commissioner Ruth Goba reiterated her stance that carding should be immediately abolished.
The stops have been the focus of intense criticism, not only because they net a disproportionately high number of people with black and brown skin, but also because of the hundreds of thousands of details collected about individuals who have never been implicated in a crime.
Lawyer Vilko Zbogar challenged the force’s right to compile the data, filing an application Wednesday for a judicial review on behalf of law student Knia Singh, who says he has been stopped by police 30 times and documented in eight of those encounters.
The Toronto Liberal caucus of MPPs has also added its voice to the growing opposition, releasing a letter to the Star that said carding “in its current form” is a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as the Ontario Human Rights code.
The practice “discriminates,” wrote caucus chair Peter Milczyn. “We are concerned that carding disproportionately targets specific groups and marginalizes them,” he said. “It simply does not maintain a proper balance between civil liber- ties and public safety.”
Yasir Naqvi, Ontario’s minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, “is reviewing this issue and has already begun to reach out to stakeholder groups to hear their views on how we can move forward,” wrote Milczyn.
The letter from Milczyn was received by the Star in advance of a press conference on Sunday by Mayor John Tory, who announced that he would call for a “permanent cancellation” of carding at the June 18 police board meeting and start “fresh” to create a new community engagement policy.
In 2014, the Toronto police board passed a progressive community engagement policy that said carding could only be carried out during criminal investigations or in situations to guarantee safety.
“(Carding) simply does not maintain a proper balance between civil liberties and public safety.” CAUCUS CHAIR PETER MILCZYN
The policy was scuttled, however, after a refusal by then-chief Bill Blair to implement it by writing procedures. The board voted in a watered-down policy in April this year.
Blair then wrote procedures, which are still in a draft form and which Saunders continues to work on, including a requirement to issue a receipt for carding interactions. Gray said Saunders is looking at all options, including a business card receipt, a double-sided business card or a separate piece of paper.
On Thursday, Gray repeated Saunders’ promise that he would end random stops.
“It is the chief’s position that the process of ‘carding’ means an intelligence-led and focused interaction,” wrote Gray in an email to the Star. “He has been consistently clear that randomness has no place in this process.”
Carding data will not be disclosed in background checks — the provincial government is requiring that change — although Blair said several times that the force had never disclosed carding data during the so-called vulnerable-sector screenings, done checking on would-be volunteers or community-agency employees seeking to work with children or vulnerable people.