Carding is not about safety but more about control
The reaffirmation of police carding in Toronto makes me want to run through the streets and scream until I lose my voice. But that wouldn’t be safe for me. Someone would inevitably call the police to come and control my black body. The latest decision on carding means I am still not allowed to walk home quietly without police having the right to stop, detain, question, and document me. I want to holler in frustration, which is risky in a city that interprets the sounds of my pain as yet another threat.
Toronto has declared, again, that there is no public safety without permanent scrutiny of black people. Unless we are prepared to subject ourselves to the grotesque physical and mental exam that is carding, we can’t walk, we can’t drive, we can’t breathe. When black people dare to cry out about these injustices, we do so at great risk to ourselves. But it would be even more dangerous to accept this latest assault on our humanity.
We must scream our opposition to carding and expose the broader reality that intervention by force is the government’s answer to practically every issue in Toronto’s black communities. Black man having a mental health crisis in the street? Call the police. Black parents send their child to school with roti for lunch? Call children’s aid. Black Lives Matter protesting because Toronto police assaulted or killed or traumatized another black person? Call the RCMP. The state is not trying to help black people, it is trying to control us.
The police board says officers can continue their carding, as long as they promise not to target people based on the colour of their skin. The board is also allowing Chief Mark Saunders, or anyone he designates, to continue using the database that contains info from millions of documented stops in recent years, as long as he promises only to access the database for good reasons. Police face no real consequence for disproportionately denying black residents our dignity, privacy and safety. Police will continue to use data that was taken by force, including information taken from children.
After the board’s latest approval of carding, Saunders said police need access to the carding database to deal with crimes and emergencies. He told reporters, “If you have a family member that has Alzheimer’s, and there’s information that can help show us patterns and trends, and where that person is going, life-saving conditions, a person that’s suicidal, information that we have so that we can maximize opportunities for saving people. When you look at all sorts of things. Abductions. There’s so many reasons where there’s information, where if we have access to that information, it could potentially save lives.”
If we accept Saunders’ argument, black people should actually be grateful that police disproportionately documented us, because we are now more likely to be saved by the police when we are in trouble. Perhaps all the documentation of our families in the child welfare system, and of our sisters and brothers who are being kept behind bars, will save us too. Perhaps the store clerk who follows us as we shop is just making sure we’re enjoying our shopping experience.
Sandy Hudson, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, told a story at a public event recently about the incessant use of force against black Torontonians. Hudson and some of her friends were standing near a public square when they saw a black man running down the street. The man was screaming. A police officer rushed the man and tackled him to the ground. Hudson and her friends ran over to intervene. After demanding the officer release the man, Hudson and others attempted to console him. They learned that the man was running down the street in distress because he had just witnessed his mother’s death.
Toronto’s reflex is to control its black population by force, instead of meeting us with love and support. The city sends police to act as our social workers, counsellors, teachers, coaches, landlords, nurses, and sometimes even our transit service. If the state needs a constant threat of force to engage with black people, we will never be safe.
A police database is not our salvation. Black people have been in Toronto’s streets in 2016, organizing our screams and our dreams into action. We have to keep going — the incremental gestures we are being offered are not good enough.
Toronto has declared, again, that there is no public safety without permanent scrutiny of black people