Chief Saunders, it is time to end carding
Dear Chief Saunders:
Sir, I don’t know you from a hole in the wall; and I don’t need to.
But you are the new sheriff in town and you have, maybe, a few months before the citizens of Toronto form a lasting opinion of you. Use this time well.
The first test comes June 18 when the police services board meets for the first time with you as chief. The board is the civilian oversight body that creates the policies that guide your officers. And it seems certain the board will want to end the controversial practice of carding.
Your response, sir, is the most anticipated since Rob Ford took the stand in his conflict of interest trial. Previews have not been positive.
From our early glimpse of you, sir, you exude stiff resistance to community reality that conflicts with police practice and policy. Some might call it stubbornness, arrogance even. Maybe it is a resoluteness borne out of the work you do.
I venture to remind you, sir, that you are no longer head of homicide or the drug squad; you are not a staff sergeant straddling management and the rank and file. You are chief of police.
Everyone knows you are a cop’s cop. But now you are the CEO of a $1.1-billion operation. You don’t need the swagger to prove you are the baddest man in the room.
Over the one or two terms you will serve as chief, you will find that more often than not it is quiet persuasion — not unbridled force — that carries the day.
The issue of carding is at your door, sir. Some say you didn’t ask for it, that it was dumped on you by the intransigence of your predecessor and the inability of his civilian masters to find workable approaches to a ticklish problem.
If you didn’t ask for it you are not shrinking from it. You seem to relish assuming the same untenable position of your former boss. It will ruin your tenure, sir.
Please understand that whatever your intentions, the victims of carding will no longer succumb to its practice. A people cannot be policed unless they agree to be policed. Toronto’s black community will not submit to this form of policing as long as present memories exist. Citizens of Toronto — and those watching from afar — find it objectionable, demeaning, despicable, racist and palpably offensive.
In the early days of our tenure you have attempted to redefine carding. Too late, sir. Torontonians know what it is and they don’t like it.
In early interviews you have attempted to reframe carding into something that is benign, legal and an essential tool in the arsenal against crime. No traction on that, either, sir.
You have no doubt received support from segments of the city that feel police should have unfettered right to stop anyone, search any property, profile the usual suspects. Many of these supporters are racists who think that the black complex- ion of the city’s estimated 3,000 gangbangers give police the right to stop and question your son and mine, any time police choose.
You know such an approach, while capable of generating more arrests, is arguably illegal and unsustainable. It leads to anger, hurt, distrust, disrespect and a soul-robbing demeaning that erodes confidence in the police and the institution of justice. That’s why so many Torontonians have, in short order, added their voice in protest of the practice.
In the first months of your term you have tried to change the narrative around carding. That strategy comes from a failed blueprint.
You tell us that you are against random stops. That police card only in pursuit of criminals and in targeted situation where they are gaining intelligence to fight specific crimes. If that is so, we don’t need to have a conversation. Police everywhere have broad rights. They can investigate at their discretion.
The carding controversy and conversation rages because careful analysis from the police’s own data shows disproportionate outcomes for citizens with black and brown skin, suggestive of bias in the way police carry out their work right here in Toronto.
The Star’s investigations since 2002 have shown that black people in certain circumstances are treated more harshly than white people. They are detained for simple drug possession and held for bail more often than white people who face similar charges. They are disproportionately ticketed for certain driving offences that would only come to light after a stop. People with black skin, and, to a lesser extent, brown, are stopped, questioned and documented on carding encounters at higher rates than white people.
Carding is just a clear, quantifiable manifestation of a pernicious practice.
Carding is supposedly suspended — but your officers seem to continue to harass citizens on the streets, in their cars, without the encounter being initiated for a defined public safety reason.
At the Harry Jerome Awards last April, a relative of one of the black youth recipients was beside himself — angry because he says one of your officers stopped the recipient driving his parents’ upscale car and made it clear to the top student that he cannot be driving such a car without eliciting police suspicion and intervention. C’mon sir, that’s outrageous. Normally, I would add — “and you know it.” Sadly, I can’t. The evidence is your sensibilities have been denuded by decades inside the police subculture valiantly fighting the bad guys. How else to explain that you consider it acceptable for police to stop you, sir, an estimated 10 times over the years for nothing more than, maybe, you were wearing your baseball cap backwards.
First, I think you know that’s not the reason they stopped you. Secondly, you accept the intrusion. Thirdly, you are so infected by police culture you fail to see how such racial profiling or unwarranted Charter-rights violations will lead citizens to view police as an occupying army. Toronto is a safe city. The last thing we need is a police force at war with its citizens. That’s what we will get, if radical surgery is not performed on carding and other police interactions with citizens.
Across North America and the world, a movement bubbles around the issue of police-community engagements. Peel Region on Friday directed police to report on a review of its carding practices. A number of Toronto citizens are lending their voices to pleas to work with citizens, not against them.
We want a safe Toronto. We fear that all it takes is one incident of an harassed youth to become frustrated and lose it — and Toronto will be on global newscasts. You, chief, have the mandate to prevent this.
Effective policing takes brawn, brains and heart, chief. We know you have the brawn. Those who selected you chief say you have the smarts. This is a plea for you to examine your heart.
Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca