Peel police chief asked for carding ‘success stories,’ emails show
Staff struggled to find examples where practice helped solve crimes
Peel police Chief Jennifer Evans has searched for three years to find proof that carding helps solve crimes, internal emails obtained by the Star show.
Senior uniformed staff have struggled to find examples, and even earlier this year Evans was asking for “success stories” while the force often reacted to media reports on carding, the emails reveal.
The emails were released after a freedom-of-information request by a Peel Region resident seeking all records related to race statistics collected during controversial street checks, known as carding in Toronto, where the practice has been suspended. It is still being done in Peel.
Records show that Evans sent an email to four of her senior staff, including two deputy chiefs, on Jan. 7, 2015 — the day after then-Toronto police chief Bill Blair suspended carding by his force.
Her email, with the subject line, “PRP17s” (the name of the contact cards used by Peel police), stated: “We need to find out if we have any recent success stories” indicating that carding helped solve crimes.
On November 15, 2012, Evans had written to senior police staff to find out the “significance” of carding in the abduction and murder case of 9-year-old Cecilia Zhang in 2003. Staff confirmed that day that a PRP17 card was used to help find Zhang’s murderer, Min Chen, in 2004.
On Monday, a spokesperson for Evans said the chief asked for information because there is no system in place to link carding with crimes.
The province is currently reviewing carding and plans to bring in Ontario-wide standards. Critics argue that no proof has been presented to show that carding helps solve crimes, but law enforcement continues to argue it is a valuable investigative tool.
The province has not asked police for any data to support that claim.
Carding has come under fire for disproportionately targeting minorities. Data recently obtained by the Star shows that from 2009 to 2014, the Peel force conducted 159,303 street checks and that black people were three times more likely to be stopped than whites.
Evans has continued to defend street checks, and at a Sept. 25 police board meeting provided six examples where it helped solve crimes: two homicides, a hit and run, a home invasion resulting in a sexual assault, a robbery and a human trafficking case.
Despite being asked by the board to suspend the practice, she refused.
Carding is a controversial practice that involves officers stopping citizens and storing their details in a police database. Anyone who is being carded can legally walk away from police.
As the issue of carding grew more controversial in Toronto, an email dated Jan. 24, 2013 from the Peel police board’s executive director, Fred Biro, was sent to Evans.
It included a Star article, published the day before, concerning a Law Union of Ontario submission to the Toronto police board alleging that carding violates Charter of Rights protections against unlawful search and seizure and detention.
Later that day, then-deputy chief Frank Roselli sent Evans an email stating, “in case you need the good news stories,” with an email pasted in from 2012 highlighting the Zhang case and another homicide that was solved with the help of a carding stop.
Asked Monday about the emails, Evans responded through a spokesperson.
“As previously communicated, there are a number of important investigations which have benefitted from the practice of street checks. The murder of Celia Zhang being one of the more recent and wellpublicized cases,” said Staff Sgt. Dan Richardson of the 2004 arrest.
“Although used regularly by investigators to link persons and associates with locations of incidents, currently there is no system in place to capture the requested data on successful linkages. As such, Chief Evans asked for recent cases to identify investigations that have benefitted from the information contained in a street check card,” he said.
“Street checks, when conducted properly, are a valuable, intelligencegathering investigative tool which helps the police solve crime and keep our community safe.”