Toronto police out-carded Ottawa
In 2012, street checks were done almost 20 times more often in T.O.
At the height of the controversial practice of carding in 2012 in Toronto, police were conducting street checks at a rate of about 20 times that of Ottawa, the province’s second-largest city.
In 2012, out of population of close to 900,000, almost 7,000 contact cards were filled out in Ottawa, representing 1 for every 128 residents.
In Toronto that year, just over 400,000 cards were filled out in a city of 2.7 million — in other words, one card for every 6.5 residents.
Non-residents are also carded. But in order to compare rates, the Star looked at contact cards per capita based on the populations of Ottawa and Toronto.
The stark differences speak to just how often Toronto police officers were stopping, questioning and documenting citizens in encounters that typically involve no arrests or charges.
Everything changed in 2013, when a new policy required officers to give a receipt to people who had been carded. The numbers began to drop significantly in Toronto.
By 2014, the year before carding was suspended by former chief Bill Blair, the degree of carding in Ottawa and Toronto had levelled out.
Toronto police filled out just over 11,000 contact cards in 2014, or one for every 232 residents, compared to one for every 221 in Ottawa.
The Ottawa Police Service released numbers related to its carding practices this week in anticipation of an upcoming provincial review of street checks, which could lead to a standardized model for all police forces.
There have been repeated calls by some groups to end the practice entirely, while law enforcement agencies maintain that it helps prevent crime.
“Since 2012 the Toronto Police Service has undertaken significant changes to the way it conducts community engagements and our statistics reflect those efforts,” said Toronto police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray.
“The Service will continue to evaluate how best to move forward with the latest policy approved by the Toronto Police Services Board and will continue to focus training for our officers on how best to deliver fair, impartial and unbiased policing services.”
Ottawa, which has a police force of 1,300 sworn members compared to more than 5,000 in Toronto, said that the largest ethnic groups carded between 2011 and 2014 were categorized as white (58 per cent), black (20 per cent) and Middle Eastern (14 per cent).
Only about 5 per cent of Ottawa’s overall population of 900,000 is black, while 3.5 per cent identified as “Arab,” according to Statistics Canada figures. Nearly 78 per cent of the population is white.
Ottawa police spokesman Insp. Mark Patterson told the Star that people should not read too much into the numbers regarding skin colour, saying police are still analyzing the data.
“We’re doing a lot of consultation with the public. They need further analysis,” he said, adding that the public should know Ottawa police does not do random street checks.
“Our officers are cognizant of how street checks work,” he said. “We don’t like the term random. We do street checks in relation to criminal activity . . . We don’t stop people randomly. There’s a criminal element associated to (the stop).”
Toronto police were unable to provide 2014 numbers regarding skin colour.
For 2012, numbers obtained by the Star show that 24 per cent of those carded were black, while blacks represent only 8.4 per cent of Toronto’s population. Forty-six per cent of those carded were white; about half of Toronto’s population is white.
Other police forces in Ontario have publicly released statistics related to carding ahead of the provincial review.
Hamilton police recently reported that it only carded188 people in 2014, representing one for every 2,765 residents. That is a significant drop from 1,365 the previous year, or one for every 244 residents. In London, Ont., police conducted 8,400 street checks last year, or about one for every 43 residents, according to a London Free Press report. The Toronto Star is seeking people who have had encounters with the Toronto Police and believe they have been “carded,” and are willing to ask for — and share — their carding information. For more information, visit thestar.com/ news/gta/carding.html